Ubiquitous quantum communications
''It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future'' - Mark Twain.

Yet, Gordon Moore's predictions - known as Moore's Law - made in 1965 remained valid for half a century!

As a result, semi-conductor technology is approaching nano-scale
integration and on this journey to quantum futures the traveller
enters the world of quantum physics, where many of the phenomena are
rather different from those of classical physics. This proposal
contributes to the 'quantum jig-saw puzzle', with special emphasis on
the enabling techniques of ubiquitous quantum communications,
potentially leading to job- and wealth-creation on a similar scale to
the economic benefits of flawless classic wireless communications.

My ultimate goal as a telecommunications researcher is to build
bridges across the exciting fields of quantum physics, mathematics,
computer science and hardware aspects of quantum communications.
Specifically, the three Key Challenges of Work-Packages 1-3 on the new
concept of Pareto-optimum error control, secret key-distribution,
network coding and entanglement distribution will lead to creating
stepping-stones for the Grand Challenge of Work-Package 4, dedicated
to the support of quantum-communications for aircraft 'above the
clouds'.

Methodology: theoretical performance bounds will be established
 based on the hitherto unexplored Pareto-optimum quantum design
  philosophy using multi-component optimization. Explicitly, the
Pareto-front of optimal solutions will be found off-line, where none
of the conflicting parameters, such as the bit-error ratio, transmit
power, delay and implementation complexity can be improved without
degrading some of the others. A suite of new soft-decision aided
components will be conceived by invoking code-specific quantum
syndrome decoders to be designed for iterative soft-information
exchange without perturbing the fragile quantum states. Finally,
quantum-communications solutions will be created for drones and planes.