Time-Interleaved C-Band Co-Propagation of Quantum and Classical Channels

A successful commercial deployment of quantum key distribution (QKD) technologies requires integrating QKD links into existing fibers and sharing the same fiber networks with classical data traffic. To mitigate the spontaneous Raman scattering (SpRS) noise from classical data channels, several quantum/classical coexistence strategies have been developed. O-band solutions place the QKD channel in the O-band for lower SpRS noise but with the penalty of higher fiber loss and can rarely reach beyond 80 km of fiber; another method is C-band coexistence with attenuated classical channels, which sacrifices the performance of classical channels for lower SpRS noise. In this work, a time-interleaving technique is demonstrated to enable the co-propagation of quantum and classical channels in the C-band without sacrificing either performance. By embedding QKD pulses in the gaps between classical data frames, the quantum channel is isolated from SpRS noise in both wavelength and time domains. C-band co-propagation of a polarization-encoding decoy-state BB84 QKD channel with a 100 Gb/s QPSK channel is experimentally demonstrated with quantum bit error rate (QBER) of 1.12%, 2.04%, and 3.81% and secure key rates (SKR) of 39.5 kb/s, 6.35 kb/s, and 128 b/s over 20, 50, and 100 km fibers, respectively. These results were achieved with the presence of classical launch power up to 10 dBm, which is at least one order of magnitude higher than reported works. We also demonstrated the co-propagation of a QKD channel with eight classical channels with total launch power up to 18-dBm (9-dBm per channel), which is the highest power of classical channels reported in C-band coexistence works.