Quantum key distribution (QKD) appears as a promising technique for encrypted communication, preserving security even in the presence of a future powerful quantum computer. At the same time, communication infrastructure becomes increasingly complex, and the exponentially increasing traffic volume makes the application of QKD a challenging task. In addition, current hardware for QKD modules is still subject to research to gain maturity, to guarantee secret key rates, and to mitigate key rate fluctuations and instabilities. Our study analyzes and optimizes five routing algorithms to efficiently use the secret keys as a resource in meshed national-wide networks. By fulfilling distinct security and performance levels, the algorithms are compared with respect to key performance indicators and optimized for blocking probabilities, load balancing, or the management traffic amount. Depending on the application, our study allows operators to choose a well-suited algorithm and gives performance estimates, including an assessment of the performance gap to globally optimized algorithms.

中文翻译：

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使用可信节点的网状 QKD 网络不同路由方法的比较和优化

量子密钥分发（QKD）似乎是一种很有前景的加密通信技术，即使在未来强大的量子计算机出现的情况下也能保持安全性。与此同时，通信基础设施变得日益复杂，流量呈指数级增长，使得QKD的应用成为一项具有挑战性的任务。此外，当前 QKD 模块的硬件仍需研究以达到成熟度、保证密钥速率并减轻密钥速率波动和不稳定性。我们的研究分析并优化了五种路由算法，以有效地使用密钥作为网状全国网络中的资源。通过满足不同的安全和性能级别，算法可以根据关键性能指标进行比较，并针对阻塞概率、负载平衡或管理流量进行优化。根据应用，我们的研究允许运营商选择最适合的算法并给出性能估计，包括评估与全局优化算法的性能差距。