India's deep technology startup QNu Labs has broken the distance barrier by achieving secure communications over 325 km of existing optical fibre network using quantum technology-based solutions, the company said on Tuesday.
“The feat is remarkable as we have used the existing optical fibre for implementation of the secure key transfer first over 150 km and through a couple of hops using the Trusted Relay Node technology," Sunil Kumar Gupta, co-founder and CEO of QNu Labs told PTI.
He said QNu Labs has become the first company globally to demonstrate secure communication over 325 km using the indigenously developed Armos Quantum Key Distribution technology and it could be extended to any length using the Trusted Relay Node.
This extensive field demonstration was carried over seven days in April 2022 in northern India, in one of the harshest terrains in the world.
Gupta said other companies had achieved a similar feat using specially developed super conducting fibre, whereas the technology developed by QNu works on existing fibre optic networks.
“The most significant aspect of this innovation is that any number of trusted nodes can now be added to the network to extend the secure communication to any communication node without any distance barrier,” he said.
The new Armos QKD technology variant has been developed as part of the iDEX programme under the Ministry of Defence. It had conferred the National Technology Award by the Department of Science and Technology last month.
Centric to the principle of quantum physics, Armos QKD system generates a pair of unconditionally secure symmetric keys, enabling future proof data encryption against any brute force attack, a statement from QNu Labs said.
This milestone achieved under stringent conditions catapults India to the forefront of quantum secure communication technology as globally, symmetric keys over only 100-120 kms (24db loss) have been accomplished at present in the actual field conditions, it said.
Armos QKD variant along with trusted node technology is commercially available on the government e-marketplace portal.
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