Keynote Talk at ECTI-Con 2017, Thailand: China’s Quantum Cryptography from Terrestrial to the Sky

By Keattisak Sripimanwat - Thailand Chapter Chair

The IEEE ComSoc Thailand chapter with a local IEEE sister society, the ECTI association (www.ecti.or.th), jointly organized a keynote speech at the annual conference, ECTI-Con 2017, at Phuket island. Dr.Wei Chen, an associate professor from the Dept. of Optics and Optical Engineering, School of Physical Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), gave a wonderful talk to an audience of nearly 100 on 28 June 2017.

The topic was “Applying quantum key distribution technology in real-life networks” covering quantum key distribution (QKD) and quantum information. In these areas after more than 30 years of research worldwide, great progress has been made both in theory and experimentation. In the past 10 years, a number of new challenges and opportunities have emerged, along with the development of QKD, especially in the field of real-life applications.

One big step that pushed forward QKD is the development of practical QKD systems and the deployment in field test networks. Evidently, several metropolitan and wide-area networks have then been built in China, which greatly promote the research and application process of quantum communication technology there.

Based on those efforts, stories of several types of practical QKD terminal and network routing equipment in the field test, more than 50-node network with the total fiber channel length over 400 km, including a wide area QKD network between two cities of nearly 200 km apart, were shown impressively in this keynote talk.

Also, additional progress with other main QKD groups in China were introduced. Those are, for instance, effective human resource and team development, future plans for China and the world QKD standard, QKD commercialization, interesting topics on ultra high speed devices and ultra long distance networks with quantum relay, the background of quantum satellites (Micius), and many others.

Finally, the event was organized successfully with delightful responses from audiences in this third joint event of USTC and IEEE & ECTI Thailand (the first workshop was at ISPACS 2011 organized in the northern city of Chiangmai, given by the lab’s head, Prof. Zheng Fu Han). A sound recording with selected presentation(s) of this fantastic talk was already composed and free for downloading at Q-Thai.org.

Consequently, ongoing collaborative activities are being discussed among IEEE ComSoc and ECTI Thailand and Dr. Chen QKD’s group toward the establishment of a student exchange program, technical visit, joint R&D topics, etc. As a result, the growth in the number of members among Thai students, scientists, and engineers in this new challenge field is anticipated.