Entangled qubit pricing for quantum networks

In this paper, we propose an approach named Entangled quBit Pricing (EBP) to price the entangled quantum bits (called ebits) in Resources as a Service (RaaS) quantum networks. In such a quantum network, the service provider pursues the maximum payoff by setting the price of ebits over each link, based on which users decide the number of ebits to purchase such that they can obtain the maximum payoff from establishing entanglement connections (ECs). The unique feature of the routing related pricing issue in quantum networks is that a user may purchase a different number of ebits over each link along his entanglement path in order to establish one EC. By taking into consideration the interaction between the service provider and users, EBP can derive a pricing scheme such that each user will automatically choose the entanglement path and purchase ebits following the way to maximize the service provider’s payoff. Extensive simulations show that the service provider can obtain 97 % more payoff with EBP compared with simply setting higher prices to ebits that can successfully create entanglements with higher probability.