ADA-QKDN: a new quantum key distribution network routing scheme based on application demand adaptation

Quantum key distribution (QKD) provides information-theoretic security based on the laws of quantum mechanics. The construction of QKD network (QKDN) is an important foundation for the widely use of quantum keys (QKs). Considering the link status flooding and unreasonable link costing of the existing researches, we propose a new routing scheme for QKDN based on application demand adaptation, named ADA-QKDN in this paper. Firstly, the routing management center is set up based on the idea of software defined network, which is used to collect the network topology information and complete the path selection, so as to reduce the data processing pressure of quantum nodes. Then, the application demand is taken as an important factor in the routing strategy. Meanwhile, the link evaluation indicators are dynamically adjusted, which is designed to provide optimal paths for applications and maximize the utilization efficiency of link resources. Finally, the impact of path hops is considered comprehensively to minimize the wastage of QKs. The simulation results show that compared with those existing schemes, the proposed ADA-QKDN increases the request success rate by more than 10%, while the effective key rate is similar to the routing schemes based on shortest path first algorithm.