Spooky RLNC at a Distance: Exploiting Quantum Entanglement to Convey Coding Coefficients

In future 6G networks, quantum technologies are expected to be used mainly for security, e.g. quantum key distribution. However, additional advantages can also result from the realization of quantum-assisted classical communication. In this work, we show that for point-to-point transmission, quantum entanglement distribution can be used to improve the latency of a communication channel when Random Linear Network Coding (RLNC) is applied, a coding scheme to increase the performance of unreliable communication networks. To do this, we compare the overhead of the traditional RLNC scheme, where all coding coefficients are transmitted in the coding overhead, with the overhead required for the case where the coefficients a re pre-distributed to the nodes by entangled EPR-pairs. Hereby, we assume a quantum network capable of distributing entanglement while idle and storing qubits, which is already targeted for other applications like superdense-coding. In addition, we verify the quality of quantum randomness for RLNC codes.