Date Approved

4-26-2026

Graduate Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Cybersecurity (M.S.)

Degree Program

School of Computing and Information Systems

First Advisor

Samah Mansour

Second Advisor

Mostafa El-Said

Academic Year

2025/2026

Abstract

Quantum networks promise transformative capabilities for computation [1], but current hardware remains limited; state-of-the-art quantum processors still operate with only a few hundred qubits [2], far below the scale required for practical applications. This limitation motivates the use of Distributed Quantum Computing (DQC), where computation is performed across multiple interconnected nodes. However, efficient DQC requires global network awareness and orchestration, a role analogous to Software-Defined Networking (SDN) in classical systems. In this work, we investigate the impact of SDN-inspired control logic on quantum networks by executing a scaled distributed implementation of Shor’s algorithm to factor N = 15 over a realistic noisy network. The SDN controller comprises seven modules: Monitor, Watchdog, Node-Assigner, Translator, Executioner, Recovery-Engine, and a central Controller, providing active hardware benchmarking, quality-ranked node selection, EDF-based scheduling, and DEJMPS entanglement purification. We compare this against a baseline executor with equivalent quantum capability but no monitoring, quality assessment, or purification. Across 100 independent network configurations (shots) with 50 circuit executions each, the SDN controller achieved a shot-success rate of 19.0% compared to 12.4% for the baseline, a 6.6 percentage-point improvement. The SDN’s primary advantage stems from its systematic detection and avoidance of by-design noisy nodes, a deliberately degraded node that the baseline always assignsto a critical qubit role. These results provide empirical evidence that state-aware orchestration is not a convenience but a necessity for executing deep-circuit algorithms over noisy, heterogeneous quantum networks.

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