Quantum Communications in 6G Wireless Networks

Title: Quantum Communications in 6G Wireless Networks
Summary:
Starting 2020, 5G services have been rolled out in various parts of the world. Now it is the right time to start investigating the new use cases and technologies for the next generation 6G communication technology for 2030 and beyond. This talk will discuss the various use cases and the required technologies in future 6G networks. Apart from high data rates, 6G would require supporting enhanced security and privacy of the data. With the rapid advancement in practical quantum computing, the security of RSA public key encryption and Diffie Hellman based key distribution protocols are at risk, since the Shor’s factoring algorithm can be run on a large quantum processor to efficiently solve the prime factorization and discrete logarithm problems. Quantum communications would play an important role in 6G networks where quantum key distribution (QKD) protocol can be used to distribute quantum secure keys between two legitimate users whose security is guaranteed by the laws of quantum physics. The quantum secure keys can be used for one-time-pad based physical layer security or for symmetric key encryption at the higher layers in future 6G networks. This talk will discuss continuous-variable QKD (CV-QKD), which can be implemented by using coherent laser sources and homodyne/ heterodyne detectors, making it easier to integrate in future 6G telecommunication networks. This talk will also present a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) transmission scheme for continuous variable QKD (CV-QKD) system operating at THz frequencies. MIMO is a mature technology in classical wireless communication systems, and has been successfully deployed in LTE, 5G and Wi-Fi standards. However, the potential of MIMO for enhancing quantum wireless communications has not been fully investigated yet. This talk presents a quantum analogue of classical MIMO system with application in CV-QKD for future 6G wireless networks.
Biography:
Neel Kanth Kundu received the B.Tech. degree in electrical engineering with specialization in communication systems and networking from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, India, in 2018 and the Ph.D. degree in electronic and computer engineering with scientific computing concentration from The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) in 2022. Currently he is a postdoctoral research associate with the Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering, HKUST.
From May 2016 to July 2016, he was a visiting student intern with the Rice Integrated Systems and Circuits Lab, Rice University, USA. From May 2017 to July 2017, he was a student trainee with the Samsung Research Institute, Bengaluru, India. From December 2021 to May 2022, he was a visiting Ph.D. student with the Department of Engineering, University of Ferrara, Italy. His research interests include signal processing for 6G wireless communications, quantum communications, and quantum information processing.
Dr. Kundu is the recipient of the Hong Kong Ph.D. Fellowship, Overseas Research Award, HKUST RedBird Academic Excellence Award, and Hong Kong Telecommunication Institute of Information Technology Post-Graduate Excellence Scholarship. He was one of the winners of the 3 Minute Research Video Contest at the Global Young Scientists Summit'21, a forum that includes talks from Nobel Laureates, Fields Medal, and Turing Award Winners, organized by National Research Foundation, Government of Singapore.

Facilitators : Pawel Gora, CEO of Quantum AI Foundation and Shadab Hussain, co-founder of Quantum Computing India.