2025/09/20 by Xiaojie Fan, Fan, Xiaojie, C. R. Ramakrishnan +3
Computer Science · Medicine · Physics and Astronomy · #Biofield Effects and Biophysics #FOS: Computer and information sciences #FOS: Physical sciences #Networking and Internet Architecture (cs.NI) #Quantum Computing Algorithms and Architecture #Quantum Mechanics and Applications #Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2509.16817
openalex publication_date 2025/09/20 · openalex created_date 2025/10/16 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The development of large-scale quantum networks requires not only advances in physical-layer technologies but also a comprehensive protocol stack that integrates communication, control, and resource management across all layers. We present the first such protocol stack, which introduces a Global Entanglement Module (GEM) that maintains a consistent, network-wide view of entanglement resources through distributed synchronization strategies. By enabling real-time adaptive execution of entanglement distribution plans, GEM bridges the gap between static planning and dynamic operation. The stack naturally supports pre-distributed entanglement, purification, and multi-partite state generation, making it applicable to a broad range of quantum networking applications. We design and evaluate multiple adaptive heuristics for real-time execution and show that a lightweight scoring-based strategy consistently achieves the best performance, improving entanglement generation rates by about 20% over a globally optimal but non-adaptive fixed-tree baseline and achieving more than a two-fold improvement relative to recent connectionless approaches. Across all scenarios-including predistribution and fidelity analysis-GEM consistently enables lower latency and robust operation. These results establish a practical pathway toward scalable, adaptive quantum internet systems.