DH-EAC: Design of a Dynamic, Hierarchical Entanglement Access Control Protocol

Abstract: We propose Dynamic, Hierarchical Entanglement Access Control (DH-EAC), a pure-quantum protocol for fair and anonymous allocation of scarce entanglement across wide-area quantum networks composed of many quantum LANs (QLANs). Prior Dicke-state-based pure-quantum MACs resolve contention by local measurements without classical signaling, but they mainly target a single QLAN under static conditions; extending them to wide-area, dynamic settings while avoiding post-selection reconciliation remains open. DH-EAC adopts a two-layer pure-quantum lottery: the outer layer selects winning QLANs and the inner layer selects winning nodes within each winning QLAN. A key design principle is that both the winning set and the per-QLAN quota are fixed by measurements alone, so the contention loop requires no classical round trip. The protocol thus aims to jointly satisfy anonymity (no node IDs revealed until decisions are fixed) and fairness (bias suppression under heterogeneous QLAN sizes). We also provide analytical models for success probability and latency under a standard i.i.d. loss model, and we evaluate DH-EAC against two baselines - single-layer Dicke within one QLAN and a classical GO-driven allocator - using a minimal, reproducible set of scenarios. Metrics include success probability, end-to-end latency, throughput, and Jain's fairness index. The results indicate that DH-EAC offers an implementable design point in the space of entanglement access control, balancing pure-quantum contention resolution, anonymity, and scalability for multi-QLAN networks.