A wide area quantum key distribution (QKD) network deployed on communication infrastructures provided by China Mobile Ltd. is demonstrated. Three cities and two metropolitan area QKD networks were linked up to form the Hefei-Chaohu-Wuhu wide area QKD network with over 150 kilometers coverage area, in which Hefei metropolitan area QKD network was a typical full-mesh core network to offer all-to-all interconnections, and Wuhu metropolitan area QKD network was a representative quantum access network with point-to-multipoint configuration. The whole wide area QKD network ran for more than 5000 hours, from 21 December 2011 to 19 July 2012, and part of the network stopped until last December. To adapt to the complex and volatile field environment, the Faraday-Michelson QKD system with several stability measures was adopted when we designed QKD devices. Through standardized design of QKD devices, resolution of symmetry problem of QKD devices, and seamless switching in dynamic QKD network, we realized the effective integration between point-to-point QKD techniques and networking schemes.
@article{arxiv.1409.1568,
title = {Field and long-term demonstration of a wide area quantum key distribution network},
author = {Shuang Wang and Wei Chen and Zhen-Qiang Yin and Hong-Wei Li and De-Yong He and Yu-Hu Li and Zheng Zhou and Xiao-Tian Song and Fang-Yi Li and Dong Wang and Hua Chen and Yun-Guang Han and Jing-Zheng Huang and Jun-Fu Guo and Peng-Lei Hao and Mo Li and Chun-Mei Zhang and Dong Liu and Wen-Ye Liang and Chun-Hua Miao and Ping Wu and Guang-Can Guo and Zheng-Fu Han},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1409.1568},
year = {2014}
}