Airborne quantum key distribution (QKD) that can synergize with terrestrial networks and quantum satellite nodes is expected to provide flexible and relay links for the large-scale integrated communication network. However, the photon transmission rate would be randomly reduced, owing to the random distributed boundary layer that surrounding to the surface of the aircraft when the flight speed larger than Mach 0.3. Here, we investigate the airborne QKD performance with the BL effects. Furthermore, we take experimental data of supersonic BL into the model and compare the airborne QKD performance under different conditions. Simulation results show that, owing to the complex small-scale turbulence structures in the supersonic boundary layer, the deflection angle and correspondingly drifted offset of the beam varied obviously and randomly, and the distribution probability of photons are redistributed. And the subsonic and supersonic boundary layer would decrease ~35.8% and ~62.5% of the secure key rate respectively. Our work provides a theoretical guidance towards a possible realization of high-speed airborne QKD.

Quantum networks enable many applications beyond the reach of classical networks by supporting the establishment of long-distance entanglement connections, and are already stepped into the entanglement distribution network stage. The entanglement routing with active wavelength multiplexing schemes is urgently required for satisfying the dynamic connection demands of paired users in large-scale quantum networks. In this article, the entanglement distribution network is modeled into a directed graph, where the internal connection loss among all ports within a node is considered for each supported wavelength channel, which is quite different to classical network graphs. Afterwards, we propose a novel first request first service (FRFS) entanglement routing scheme, which performs the modified Dijkstra algorithm to find out the lowest loss path from the entangled photon source to each paired user in order. Evaluation results show that the proposed FRFS entanglement routing scheme can be applied to large-scale and dynamic topology quantum networks.