Providing adaptive quality of security in quantum networks

Recently, several Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) networks, such as Tokyo QKD, SECOQC, have been built to evaluate the quantum based OTP(One Time Pad) secure communication. As an ideal unconditional secure technique, OTP requires the key rate the same as the information rate. However, comparing with high speed information traffic (Gbps), the key generation rate of QKD is very poor(Kbps). Therefore, in practical QKD networks, it is difficult to support numerous applications and multiple users simultaneously. To address this issue, we argue that it is more practical to provide quality of security instead of OTP in quantum networks. We further propose ASM, an Adaptive Security Selection Mechanism for quantum networks based on the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). In ASM, services can select an appropriate encryption algorithm that satisfies the proper security level and performance metrics under the limit of the key generation rate. We also implement ASM under our RT-QKD platform, and evaluate its performance. Experimental results demonstrate that ASM can select the optimal algorithm to meet the requirement of security and performance under an acceptable cost.