Joint Communication and Sensing with Bipartite Entanglement over Bosonic Channels
Provides a theoretical framework for joint communication and sensing in quantum networks, showing entanglement can benefit both tasks simultaneously.
The paper characterizes the trade-off in allocating entanglement resources between communication and sensing over a lossy thermal-noise bosonic channel, achieving a rate/error-exponent region that outperforms time-sharing and demonstrates a quantum advantage.
We consider a joint communication and sensing problem over an optical link in which a low-power transmitter simultaneously communicates with a receiver and identifies the range of a defect producing a backscattered signal. We model the system as a lossy thermal-noise bosonic channel, in which the target location, modeled as a beamsplitter, affects the timing of the backscattered signal. Motivated by the envisioned deployment of entanglement-enabled quantum networks, we allow the transmitter to exploit shared entanglement to assist both sensing and communication. Since entanglement is known to enhance sensing, as demonstrated in Quantum Illumination (QI), and to increase communication rates through entanglement-assisted communication, the transmitter faces a trade-off in allocating its entanglement resources between the two tasks. Our main result is a characterization of these trade-offs in the form of an achievable rate/error-exponent region, which can outperform time-sharing and demonstrates a quantum advantage.