Steve Greenland

Space-based quantum key distribution (QKD) overcomes the limits of distance between terrestrial users caused by losses in optical fibre. Thus, it is the most promising method to establish a global scale QKD network. While the first QKD platform in the space - “the Micius satellite” – was a ground-breaking proof of principle demonstration, it is not a commercially favourable solution. We present our Cube-Sat payload design which has a more economically viable key-rate. The whole system is consisting of two parts, a 2U transmitter payload in Cube Satellite and an Optical Ground Station (OGS) working as receiver. The system is designed for polarisation based BB84/Decoy-State protocol with 100Mhz key transmission rate. In order to avoid the light pollution near the metropolitan centres and provide flexibility, we present our progress towards a mobile OGS which will be able to act as a receiver for the quantum signal.