Quantum Cryptography, Quantum Networking

QNu Labs sends quantum keys over 5.5km of open air in India

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October 6, 2026 by Ivy Delaney

QNu Labs completed a 5.56 kilometer free-space Quantum Key Distribution link between BISAG-N and IIT Gandhinagar, marking India’s first demonstration of secure quantum communication at that scale beyond laboratory settings. The field trial generated encryption keys at a rate of 230 to 260 bits per second and integrated them with BISAG-N’s Vedic Kavach platform for dual-layer quantum security. Sunil Gupta, Co-founder and CEO of QNu Labs, highlighted the potential for deployment beyond fiber optic cables and toward satellite communication.

56km Free-Space QKD Link Established Between BISAG-N and IIT Gandhinagar

The successful transmission of quantum keys over 5.56 kilometers of open air represents an advance in practical quantum communication, achieved by QNu Labs in collaboration with BISAG-N and IIT Gandhinagar. This field trial, conducted between September 27 and 28, established a secure channel using QNu Labs’ Pointing, Acquisition and Tracking (PAT) system, demonstrating functionality beyond controlled laboratory settings. A stable Quantum Bit Error Rate below 5% was maintained throughout the experiment, a key metric for reliable key distribution.

Vedic Kavach combines post-quantum cryptography with quantum key distribution, offering a resilient approach to data protection. Vinay Thakur, DG of BISAG-N, emphasized that the integration of Vedic Kavach with QNu Labs’ QKD technology demonstrates the potential of combining post-quantum cryptography with quantum key distribution as complementary layers of security to evolve with emerging requirements.

This layered approach addresses potential vulnerabilities in both classical and quantum computing landscapes. Cmde Manish Tripathi (Retd.), In-charge of ISTF at IIT Gandhinagar, added that the demonstration provides a valuable field environment for advancing practical quantum communication technologies, bringing together academic research, indigenous technology and real-world experimentation.

Quantum security will become meaningful at scale only when technologies can move beyond controlled laboratory environments and operate across real communication infrastructure.

Sunil Gupta, Co-founder and CEO of QNu Labs
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free-space optics post-quantum cryptography QKD quantum key distribution
Avatar of Ivy Delaney

Ivy Delaney

Ivy Delaney has been working with neural networks and machine learning since the mid-nineties, back when a couple of hidden layers and a long afternoon of training counted as ambitious. She has watched the field go from academic curiosity to the thing quietly running underneath everything, and she brings that long view to quantum computing. For Quantum Zeitgeist she covers the ground where the two fields meet. That means quantum machine learning and the variational algorithms it leans on, and it also means the less glamorous but more interesting story of classical machine learning already doing real work inside quantum machines, decoding error-correcting codes, calibrating noisy hardware and learning the error models that simulators depend on. She writes about the hardware those algorithms have to run on too, and about the post-quantum cryptography scramble that the same hardware has set off. Her stories typically start with the paper, whether that is peer-reviewed work, conference proceedings or an arXiv preprint, with the source linked so you can hold a claim up against the research it came from. She is unimpressed by benchmarks that will not say what they beat, and by demonstrations that only work in the press release.

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