A Modular Quantum Network Architecture for Integrating Network Scheduling with Local Program Execution
This work addresses the challenge of integrating network scheduling with quantum program execution for near-term quantum network applications, but the results are preliminary and incremental.
The paper proposes a modular, hardware-agnostic architecture for scheduling network operations to generate entanglement on demand, integrating network scheduling with local quantum program execution. A proof-of-concept on a simulated 6-node star network demonstrates feasibility and the need for robust admission control to maintain quality of service.
We propose an architecture for scheduling network operations enabling the end-to-end generation of entanglement according to user demand. The main challenge solved by this architecture is to allow for the integration of a network schedule with the execution of quantum programs running on processing end nodes in order to realise quantum network applications. A key element of this architecture is the definition of an entanglement packet to meet application requirements on near-term quantum networks where the lifetimes of the qubits stored at the end nodes are limited. Our architecture is fully modular and hardware agnostic, and defines a framework for further research on specific components that can now be developed independently of each other. In order to evaluate our architecture, we realise a proof of concept implementation on a simulated 6-node network in a star topology. We show our architecture facilitates the execution of quantum network applications, and that robust admission control is required to maintain quality of service. Finally, we comment on potential bottlenecks in our architecture and provide suggestions for future improvements.