Within the scope of the DISCRETION project the KMS was showcased for the Test Readiness Review (TRR) milestone. Representatives of the European Commission, Portugiese Navy and Portugiese National Security Office (GNS). The KMS was demonstrated and further integrated with the SDN.
The showcase was an iteration of the setup shown at the REPMUS event. From a technology point of view on the QKD-KMS level the integration with the SDN was further developed. Now the SDN can request performance parameter from the QKD-KMS, namely the Secret Key Rate (SKR), which states how many bit of keys were received from the QKD device on average within the last period, and the Effective Secret Key Rate (ESKR), which states how many bit of keys are actually available in the QKD-KMS to be allocated for usage for applications.
The SDN can use the SKR to determine if the key delivery rate from the QKD Devices is within the expected range or if it unexpectedly drops. This could lead the SDN to take action either to investigate the unexpected key supply rate or precautionary reroute selected paths. The ESKR on the other hand can be used by the SDN to determine the optimal path to assign to a new application registering to the system by matching their demand to the available keys on the network path.
To enable this feature the QKD-KMS internal Quality of Service module was improved alongside many other internal improvements. The other components in the system also increased their robustness and the SDN Controller implemented a dashboard to show the relevant information for a user.
The showcase again included the use-case of an encryptor using QKD keys obtained from the QKD-KMS to separate the red and black network, while enabling a video call, chat and file transfer. In a second use-case radio devices were configured with keys obtained by the QKD-KMS to be used for secure radio communication. The radios also showed a file transfer as an exemplary use-case.