ABSTRACT

This chapter reviews some of the most important techniques for carrying quantum bits through a quantum information network. In order to avoid a fully meshed architecture, switching units are required to build a realistic network. Traditionally, there are two paradigms in doing digital switching: circuit switching and packet switching. The classical telephone network is a circuit switching network, while the Internet is a packet switching network. Although significant differences exist between circuit switching and packet switching, the main function of each node is to move data from an input port to an output port. In the field of classical digital switching, various techniques have been designed to perform this function. Compared with classical digital switching technology, quantum information science is a relatively new field of study. Modern packet switching networks take packets that share the same transmission line as input and each packet is transferred to its destination individually.