India’s First Quantum Computing-Based Telecom Network
Recently, India’s first telecom network link based on quantum communication became operational.
- A highly secure link developed by the Center for Development of Telematics (C-DOT) has been established for the first time in India. C-DOT is under the Department of Telecommunications.
- Quantum communication can be thought of as a means of communication. Under this, the laws of quantum physics are used to send data from one place to another very securely. Thus it is much more secure than traditional communication systems.
- In key-based cryptography, data and keys are sent in the form of classical bits. These classical bits are sent as electrical or optical pulses. Classically bits are represented by 1’s and 0’s. However, in a quantum communication network the data is sent through q-bits.
- Q-bits particles are usually photons of light in a superposition state. This means that they exist in many states and can represent many combinations of 1’s and 0’s.
- If a hacker tries to hack the data sent under it, the highly sensitive quantum state ‘collapses’ to 1 or 0 and eventually the hacking attempt is also recorded.
- This property helps to build networks based on a process called quantum key distribution, or quantum key distribution, to communicate highly sensitive data.
- Under QKD the encrypted data is sent in the form of classical bits. To read this encrypted data, the decryption keys are sent to the quantum state using qubits.
Source – The Hindu
