Quantum communication system
AssigneeKabushiki Kaisha Toshiba
InventorsZhiliang Yuan, Andrew James Shields
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A quantum communication system including a sending unit and a receiving unit, said sending unit comprising a photon source assembly configured to output a stream of pulses of light having at least two different intensities and a memory configured to store information for determining which pulses should be reference pulses and which pulses should be data pulses, the average intensity of reference pulses being different to the average intensity of data pulses, the receiving unit comprising a memory for storing information for identifying the position of reference pulses within the stream of pulses and a processor for determining the calibration of the quantum communication system from the reference pulses.
Claims20
A quantum communication system comprising a sending unit and a receiving unit, said sending unit comprising a photon source assembly configured to output a stream of reference pulses multiplexed in time with data pulses, the output times of the data and reference pulses being determined from information shared between the sending unit and receiving unit, the sending unit comprising an encoder and the receiving unit comprising a decoder, the system further comprising a processor for comparing a measured count rate of the reference pulses with a predicted count rate of the reference pulses and thereby determining the polarisation calibration and/or phase calibration of at least one of the encoder or decoder.
A method of quantum communication said method comprising:
- from a sending unit, outputting a stream of reference pulses multiplexed in time with data pulses, wherein the data pulses and reference pulses are photon pulses;
- and
- in a receiving unit, receiving pulses from the sending unit and determining which of the received pulses are data pulses and which are reference pulses, wherein output times of the data and reference pulses are determined from information shared between the sending unit and receiving unit,
- the sending unit comprising an encoder and the receiving unit comprising a decoder, the method further comprising comparing a measured count rate of the reference pulses with a predicted count rate of the reference pulses and thereby determining the polarisation calibration and/or phase calibration of at least one of the encoder or decoder.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.