With a growing number of quantum networks in operation, there is a pressing need for performance analysis of quantum switching technologies. A quantum switch establishes, distributes, and maintains entanglements across a network. In contrast to a classical switching fabric, a quantum switch is a two-sided queueing network. The switch generates Link-Level Entanglements (LLEs) across links that connect users to the switch, which are then fused to process the network's entanglement requests. First, we characterize the capacity region that is defined as the set of entanglement request rates for which there exists a scheduling policy stabilizing the system. We then show that a sequence of Max-Weight policies that we propose achieve throughput optimality in the asymptotic sense. Our proof techniques analyse a two-time scale separation phenomenon at the fluid scale for a general switch topology. This allows us to demonstrate that the optimal fluid dynamics are given by a scheduling algorithm that solves a certain average reward Markov Decision Process.
Thirupathaiah Vasantam is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Durham University, UK. Before that, he worked as a Postdoc in the College of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA. He received his PhD from the department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo, Canada, in November 2019. He obtained his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in engineering from Osmania University and Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, respectively. His research focuses on stochastic modeling and performance analysis of communication networks that have applications in quantum networking, cloud computing, and Internet of Things.