Call for Papers

Submit a Paper

Quantum communication researchers have achieved significant progress during the recent decades. Quantum networking has shown promise in terms of improving the overall functional benefits of the Internet and enabling applications with no counterpart in the classical world. It is a breakthrough technology towards the unimaginable future. In a quantum network, the source and destination may be connected by quantum repeaters/routers for facilitating qubit transmissions. The quantum network of the future is envisaged to pervade the entire globe, relying on terrestrial components, satellites, airplanes, ships, and other vehicles. It is anticipated that it will support nearly unconditional security, super-computing power, large network capacity, even at high velocity, and privacy.

In the current era, quantum networks are similar to the early stage of the classical Internet in the 1970s. However, they exhibit fundamentally different features, obeying the uncertainty principle, the non-orthogonal indistinguishable theorem, the quantum non-cloning theorem, entanglement, and superposition. These constraining features make the design of quantum networks a challenging task. To make the promise of quantum networking a reality, the entire protocol stack, spanning from the physical layer enabling techniques to the application layer, requires a dedicated collaborative effort from a large fraction of the engineering and physics community. 

This Series focuses on recent advances in quantum communications and networking, and we seek original contributions in quantum networking architectures, concepts, protocols, and technologies in support of long-distance qubit transmissions and novel network applications. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Quantum communication and networking applications.
• Quantum internet architectures, protocols, and design principles.
• Intelligent quantum communication networks.
• Entanglement generation, scheduling, and distribution.
• Quantum information theory and communication protocol.
• Quantum memory and repeater design.
• Quantum routing metrics and new routing algorithms.
• Congestion control and resource allocation for quantum networks.
• Quantum data plane and quantum control plane design.
• Security, privacy, and trust in the context of quantum networks.
• Quantum network management.
• Simulators, testbeds, prototypes, implementations, and field experiments.
• Verification of the existing knowledge in real quantum networks.
• Performance evaluation and modeling.
• Migration from classical networks to quantum networks.
• Terrestrial and non-terrestrial quantum communications.
• Hybrid classical-quantum networks and applications.

View Call for Papers for Quantum Communications and Networking: Series 2

Submission Guidelines

Manuscripts should conform to the standard format as indicated in the ‘Information for Authors’ section of the Paper Submission Guidelines.

All manuscripts to be considered for publication must be submitted by the deadline through Manuscript Central. Select ‘Series/QCN’ from the drop-down menu of topic titles.

Important Dates

Series 1 Manuscript Submission Start: 10 February 2023
Manuscript Submission Deadline: 10 June 2023 (Extended Deadline)
Initial Decision Notification: 31 July 2023
Revised Manuscript Due: 30 August 2023
Final Decision Notification: 15 September 2023
Final Manuscript Due: 31 September 2023
Publication Date: November/December 2023

Guest Editors

Ruidong Li
Kanazawa University, Japan

Prineha Narang
University of California, Los Angeles, USA

Melchior Aelmans
Juniper Networks, Netherlands

Peter Mueller
IBM Zurich Research Laboratory, Switzerland

Guilu Long
Tsinghua University, China