Finite key analysis of experimentally realized practical COW-QKD protocol

Neha Pathania; Sandeep Mishra; Anirban Pathak

Finite key analysis of experimentally realized practical COW-QKD protocol

Quantum Physics 2026-02-27 v1

Authors: Neha Pathania , Sandeep Mishra , Anirban Pathak

Abstract

An experimental implementation of the Coherent One-Way Quantum Key Distribution (COW-QKD) protocol is reported under realistic conditions, and a clean and easy-to-use framework for performing finite key analysis of the COW-QKD protocol is provided by extending a set of existing results. The framework provided here is used to perform finite key rate analysis of the COW-QKD protocol with respect to the actual parameters used in the experimental realization reported here. The system is kept running for several hours with different experimental parameters and stable secure key rates between 1.2 to 1.6 kbps are observed. In addition, QBER, phase error rate and secure key rate are obtained under finite key analysis, and it is shown that COW-QKD is secure for medium-range transmissions (up-to ~ 156 (171) km of optical fiber with 0.2 dB loss per km if detector efficiency is 0.1 (0.2) and other parameters are same as those used in this experiment).

Keywords

quantum key distribution quantum cryptography

Cite

@article{arxiv.2602.22646,
  title  = {Finite key analysis of experimentally realized practical COW-QKD protocol},
  author = {Neha Pathania and Sandeep Mishra and Anirban Pathak},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.22646},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

Finite key analysis of the COW-QKD protocol is performed to obtain realistic security bounds

Finite key analysis of experimentally realized practical COW-QKD protocol

Abstract

Keywords

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