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Stealthy Low Earth Orbit Satellite-To-Ground Quantum Communication

Authors Guanqun Song , Ting Zhu

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Document Identifiers

Subject Classification

ACM Subject Classification
  • Security and privacy → Network security
Keywords
  • LEO satellites
  • QKD
  • quantum communication

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Abstract

Quantum key distribution (QKD) leveraging satellites holds promise for global-scale secure communication. However, its practical deployment is threatened by the inherent predictability of satellite orbits, which exposes quantum channels to targeted eavesdropping attacks, compromising the physical-layer security guarantees of QKD. Through security analysis, we demonstrate that such attacks can drastically increase the quantum bit error rate (QBER) from 4.7% to 27.5%, effectively disrupting secure key generation. To address this fundamental vulnerability, we introduce a novel defense framework that integrates two strategies: (1) Stealthy Deployment, which obfuscates quantum satellites within massive LEO constellations to drastically increase an adversary’s search space, and (2) Dynamic Re-routing, which is an adaptive countermeasure that re-establishes QKD sessions via alternative paths upon eavesdropping detection. Evaluated through large-scale simulations incorporating real-world satellite data, our framework demonstrates up to a 90% improvement in key generation rate under active attack, ensuring robust and resilient satellite-based QKD without modifications to the underlying quantum hardware.

Cite As Get BibTex

Guanqun Song and Ting Zhu. Stealthy Low Earth Orbit Satellite-To-Ground Quantum Communication. In 1st New Ideas in Networked Systems (NINeS 2026). Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs), Volume 139, pp. 11:1-11:26, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026) https://doi.org/10.4230/OASIcs.NINeS.2026.11

Author Details

Guanqun Song
  • Department of Computer Science and Engineering, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA
Ting Zhu
  • Department of Computer Science and Engineering, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA

Funding

This work is partially supported by CQISE Initiative Partnership Seed Award and NSF CNS-2305246.

Acknowledgements

We thank our shepherd, Scott Shenker, and the reviewers for their valuable input that significantly improved this manuscript.

References

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