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A Quantum Link Got Its Own SINR and Error Budget

Measurements on 7.3 kilometers of deployed fiber turned dark counts, classical traffic and state drift into engineering parameters.

Published Updated Story ID: mp-2026-09-12-012
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Summary

Measurements on 7.3 kilometers of deployed fiber turned dark counts, classical traffic and state drift into engineering parameters.

Researchers measured a 7.3-kilometer metropolitan fiber loop linking two Naples campuses and defined quantum-network counterparts to classical signal-to-interference-plus-noise and bit-error metrics. They separated intrinsic detector dark counts from photons induced by classical traffic, including Raman scattering and inter-fiber crosstalk. They also tracked degradation and drift for polarization, time and frequency encodings. The result is a compact experimental link budget intended to move deployed quantum fiber from a one-off physics demonstration toward repeatable network engineering.

Why it matters

Measurements on 7.3 kilometers of deployed fiber turned dark counts, classical traffic and state drift into engineering parameters.

Limits and context

No additional limitation was separately recorded.

Key claims

  1. Measurements on 7.3 kilometers of deployed fiber turned dark counts, classical traffic and state drift into engineering parameters.

    Evidence: source-2026-09-12-012

Sources

  1. arXiv preprint 2609.11359arXiv · primary research

Corrections

No corrections have been recorded for this story.