Technical Report OFDM-Assisted Simultaneous Quantum and Classical THz Communications

Abstract: The feasibility of cost-effective simultaneous quantum and classical communication (SQCC) transmitting both the quantum key and classical information via a superimposed coherent state is investigated both in optical and Terahertz (THz) bands. Since the existing THz SQCC schemes assume single-carrier (SC) transmission over flat fading channels, we embark on investigating SQCC in realistic frequency-selective multipath THz fading channels. We then propose an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) based SQCC system for time-invariant frequency-selective THz scenarios, supported by low-density parity-check coded (LDPC) multidimensional QKD reconciliation schemes. Our simulation results demonstrate that the OFDM-based SQCC scheme is capable of achieving a practical secret key rate (SKR) over a wide range of power sharing scenarios between the classical and quantum signals. By contrast its single-carrier counterpart requires the classical signal to be at least 100 times stronger than the quantum signal in THz SQCC.