A Standardized Design for Sifting in Quantum Key Distribution Software

With 5G communication networks enjoying commercial adoption, work has begun towards defining future 6G networks. The emergence of commercially viable quantum communication technologies offer these future communication networks information-theoretic key agreement techniques enabling provably quantum resistant secure communications through quantum key distribution protocols. However, commercial quantum key distribution systems rely on independent software implementations of key agreement protocols. Thus, while these systems may be mathematically secure they may incur security vulnerabilities in software. To address this we design a standardized sifting module, which can be used to generalize the description and execution of the necessary sifting in most if not all discrete variable quantum key distribution protocols, including entanglement based protocols. We give a general description of the software stack underlying implementations of the post-processing stage of quantum key distribution protocols, including our formalization of the two-way sifting stage of said protocols and the machinery required to realize it in a completely general manner. Finally, we give some example configurations for some common quantum key distribution protocols.