Dynamic Entanglement Packet Scheduling for Quantum Networks
For quantum network operators, this work improves the flexibility and performance of entanglement distribution scheduling, addressing a key bottleneck in scalable quantum networks.
The paper tackles the challenge of sharing entanglement among multiple users in quantum networks. The proposed dynamic online scheduler achieves lower completion time, higher completion ratio, and higher throughput compared to static TDMA-based scheduling, and degrades gracefully under overload.
Sharing entanglement among multiple users remains a central challenge for scalable quantum networks. Recent work proposed an on-demand entanglement packet architecture in which a controller uses a Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) approach to allocate network resources. Quantum nodes are assigned a periodic schedule that probabilistically fulfills application requests for end-to-end entanglements. The schedule is recomputed periodically using well-known algorithms, such as Earliest Deadline First (EDF). However, a static schedule offers limited flexibility when outcomes are stochastic and arrivals are asynchronous. To overcome this limitation, we propose an online scheduler that dynamically schedules, defers, retries, or drops entanglement distribution reservations. In our simulations, the dynamic scheduler achieves lower completion time, higher completion ratio, and higher throughput than the static baseline. Furthermore, when the network is overloaded, the dynamic scheduler continues to construct deadline-feasible schedules and degrades gracefully.