Real time QKD Post Processing based on Reconfigurable Hardware Acceleration

Abstract: Key Distillation is an essential component of every Quantum Key Distribution system because it compensates the inherent transmission errors of quantum channel. However, throughput and interoperability aspects of post-processing engine design often neglected, and exiting solutions are not providing any guarantee. In this paper, we propose multiple protocol support high throughput key distillation framework implemented in a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) using High-Level Synthesis (HLS). The proposed design uses a Hadoop framework with a map-reduce programming model to efficiently process large chunks of raw data across the limited computing resources of an FPGA. We present a novel hardware-efficient integrated post-processing architecture that offer dynamic error correction, a side-channel resistant authentication scheme, and an inbuilt high-speed encryption application, which uses the key for secure communication. We develop a semi automated High level synthesis framework capable of handling different QKD protocols with promising speedup. Overall, the experimental results shows that there is a significant improvement in performance and compatible with any discrete variable QKD systems.