EnQuad: A Publicly-Available Simulator for Quantum Key Distribution Protocols

In this paper, we present EnQuad Version 1.0: a high-speed and expandable simulator for Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) protocols. Surpassing available simulators, EnQuad does not only simulate a QKD stack, but also does security testing and guides the researcher on which reconciliation protocol should be used in his experimental setup. On the top of that, it recommends changes for the researcher to satisfy security or a given target key-rate if any of them is not already fulfilled. Although EnQuad V1.0 is concerned with depolarizing channels and Individual Intercept-and-Resend attacks, EnQuad is featured with 24 parameters and 9 modular functions so that it could be expanded to a wide range of QKD protocols. In addition, we validated EnQuad outcomes against a comparable simulator and against theory. Furthermore, a set of 11 experiments showed that EnQuad runs 6.12× to 12.2× faster than a comparable simulator. EnQuad was implemented in MATLAB and the code is available online.