Field demonstration of a self-contained 10 km mobile-to-ground quantum network node via common-aperture co-propagation
Abstract
In this work, we demonstrate a dual-function, common-aperture free-space optical system that simultaneously supports decoy-state BB84 quantum key distribution (QKD) at 803 nm and bidirectional classical laser communication at 640/660 nm over a 10.31 km terrestrial link from a mobile platform to a stationary ground station. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first field demonstration of a fully integrated common-aperture architecture where a co-propagating classical optical link simultaneously performs full QKD post-processing and ecrypted payload transmission over a 10 km atmospheric channel. The classical link utilizes Manchester-coded on-off keying (MC-OOK) at 10 MHz, achieving a packet error rate of ∼ 0.4 % (estimated bit error rate (BER) of 3.13 × 10−5) with hardware-based self-synchronization and error-packet retransmission. Over the 10.31 km link, the QKD system achieved an average quantum bit error rate (QBER) of 2.512 % and an average secret key rate of 644 bps using rate-adaptive low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes. Finally, using the distilled keys, real-time AES-256 encrypted image transmission was executed over the co-aligned classical optical channel, proving the feasibility of a completely self-contained, jam resistant mobile quantum optical network.
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BibTeX
@misc{kim2026field,
title = {{Field demonstration of a self-contained 10 km mobile-to-ground quantum network node via common-aperture co-propagation}},
author = {Dongkyu Kim and Dong-Gil Im and Kyungdeuk Park and Jisu Kim and Jonguk Choi and Yonggi Jo and Yong Sup Ihn},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.27427},
eprint = {2610.27427},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.27427},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Field demonstration of a self-contained 10 km mobile-to-ground quantum network node via common-aperture co-propagation
AU - Dongkyu Kim
AU - Dong-Gil Im
AU - Kyungdeuk Park
AU - Jisu Kim
AU - Jonguk Choi
AU - Yonggi Jo
AU - Yong Sup Ihn
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/20
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.27427
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.27427
AB - In this work, we demonstrate a dual-function, common-aperture free-space optical system that simultaneously supports decoy-state BB84 quantum key distribution (QKD) at 803 nm and bidirectional classical laser communication at 640/660 nm over a 10.31 km terrestrial link from a mobile platform to a stationary ground station. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first field demonstration of a fully integrated common-aperture architecture where a co-propagating classical optical link simultaneously performs full QKD post-processing and ecrypted payload transmission over a 10 km atmospheric channel. The classical link utilizes Manchester-coded on-off keying (MC-OOK) at 10 MHz, achieving a packet error rate of ∼ 0.4 % (estimated bit error rate (BER) of 3.13 × 10^−5) with hardware-based self-synchronization and error-packet retransmission. Over the 10.31 km link, the QKD system achieved an average quantum bit error rate (QBER) of 2.512 % and an average secret key rate of 644 bps using rate-adaptive low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes. Finally, using the distilled keys, real-time AES-256 encrypted image transmission was executed over the co-aligned classical optical channel, proving the feasibility of a completely self-contained, jam resistant mobile quantum optical network.
ER -