New Delhi, October 3: India has demonstrated a 5.56-km free-space Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) link between the Bhaskaracharya National Institute for Space Applications and Geo-informatics (BISAG-N) and IIT Gandhinagar, in what the government described as the country’s first such demonstration at this scale.
The field trial was conducted on the night of September 27-28, 2026, in collaboration with QNu Labs.
According to the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, the system maintained a Quantum Bit Error Rate below 5 per cent while generating secure keys at a rate of 230-260 bits per second.
The trial used QNu Labs’ Pointing, Acquisition and Tracking system to establish and maintain the free-space optical link between the two locations.
The secure keys generated during the demonstration were integrated with BISAG-N’s post-quantum cryptography-enabled Vedic Kavach platform, enabling end-to-end encryption and decryption of test messages.
The setup combined QNu Labs’ Armos hardware-based QKD device with BISAG-N’s Vedic Kavach software platform and quantum random number generation.
The ministry said the integrated architecture is designed to maintain communication resilience even if the physical quantum channel becomes temporarily unavailable.
BISAG-N Director General Vinay Thakur said the integration of Vedic Kavach with QNu Labs’ QKD technology represented a step towards practical quantum-resilient communication systems.
QNu Labs co-founder and CEO Sunil Gupta said the 5.56-km demonstration could support the development of longer-distance quantum-secure networks and future satellite-based quantum communication.
IIT Gandhinagar’s ISTF in-charge, Cmde Manish Tripathi (Retd.), said the field trial brought together indigenous technology, academic capability and real-world experimentation to advance practical quantum communication.
The government said the demonstration provides a foundation for strengthening India’s secure communication infrastructure and improving resilience against emerging threats in the quantum era.
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