A Routing Scheme Based on Multi-Objective Optimization in Quantum Satellite Networks

In quantum satellite networks, routing is an important task for providing key relay services to ground stations (GSs). For the demand of quantum keys for multiple concurrent requests between GS pairs, we formulate a multi-objective optimization routing (MOOR) problem to allocate the quantum key and time-slot resources to find routes for simultaneous services. The proposed optimization scheme maximizes the number of successful requests while minimizing the routing cost. Specifically, we consider that the fewer available quantum keys on the link, the greater the cost of occupying the link. Then we use the reciprocal of the number of available keys on links to represent link costs, and find the route with the minimum link costs. Simulation results show that the success probability of MOOR scheme is higher than that of the comparison routing strategy based on Dijkstra algorithm, especially when the number of keys forwarded by a request is not too large, the improvement is significant.