India’s Defence Research & Development Organisation & Indian Institute of Technology successfully demonstrated QKD over 100 kilometres

(NewsOnAir) A team of scientists from India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi successfully demonstrated a Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) link between Prayagraj and Vindhyachal in Uttar Pradesh, spanning over 100 kilometres.
This technological breakthrough was achieved using a commercial-grade optical fibre that was already on the market. With this breakthrough, the country has demonstrated its own secure key transfer method, which can be used to bootstrap a military-grade communication security key hierarchy.
The QKD technology will enable India’s security agencies to plan a suitable quantum communication network with indigenous technology backbone.
In the recent tests run by DRDO and IIT Delhi scientists, the performance parameters for QKD have been measured and were found to be repetitively within the reported international standards at sifted key rates of up to 10 KHz.
Dr. G Satheesh Reddy, Secretary of Defense R&D and Chairman of DRDO congratulated the scientists and professors of DRDO and IIT Delhi on the successful demonstration of this technology.
In his message to the scientific community, the DRDO Chairman noted this as one of the shining examples of synergetic research between DRDO and Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.