Comparative Study of Quantum and Classical Error Correction for Future Quantum-6G Networks

The research on 6G communication networks has started. Currently, the proposed architectures envision the realisation of a fully softwarized network continuum, with in-network intelligence for network management and operations. Moreover, more stringent requirements than 5G have been set in order to support new use cases like telepresence and massive twinning. However, these requirements implies some critical tradeoffs, which are going to limit the promises of 6G. In order to go beyond the intrinsic limitations of 6G, new resources and technologies should be found. That is why, some research groups are now investigating how quantum technologies can be integrated into 6G. This works deals with the scenario of sending classical information via a quantum channel, using the so-called dense coding protocol. If this channel is not ideal, quantum errors can affect the reliability of the communication. Nevertheless, quantum error-correcting codes are still very demanding in terms of resources and redundancy. Then, this work investigates how classical error-correcting codes (in particular, Reed-Solomon codes and turbo codes) can be applied to make reliable classical communications via quantum channels. The preliminary results of this paper show that the employment of classical forward error correction in future hybrid 6G-quantum networks can be very promising.