The latest news on the SQUIRE project:
Thursday, 30 October 2025
Radio Mocha, a program about science aired on the 'Radju Malta' radio station, recently interviewed Dr Roberto Salazar and Dr Ing. Christian Galea.
The discussion, led by Danielle Martine Farrugia, centred around quantum computers, the implications on secure communications, and the work currently being done by the group in this area. An overview of the projects, namely QUDICE, QSNP, PRISM, SQUIRE, ANQuOR, and two exciting new projects, was provided.
The full interview can be found on Radio Mocha's Facebook page.
We thank Danielle for the invitation, and look forward to the next one!
Wednesday, 29 October 2025
As part of its ongoing research in quantum communications, the Quantum Communications Research Group at the University of Malta has recently installed a new set of QKD devices.
Acquired by the PRISM project from AUREA Technology, these devices enable the transmission and reception of laser pulses used in prepare-and-measure QKD protocols. Unlike off-the-shelf QKD devices designed to be 'black boxes', where all transmitter components are contained in a single unit and all receiver components in another, the AUREA system allows complete control of all steps in the QKD protocol.
This capability makes the setup particularly well suited for research and development of QKD protocols, such as for the development of efficient error correction codes in the SQUIRE project, or the collection of quantum channel statistics for the ATTESTER project led by Prof. Tony John George Apollaro at the Department of Physics at UM. The individual hardware components can also be set up in different configurations for other experimental setups and different protocols.
Following training delivered by engineers from AUREA, work will now begin to develop the software needed to implement a full QKD protocol and generate experimental data. Since this data is gathered under real-world conditions, it will provide valuable insights for the development and testing of both new and existing algorithms across the projects in which the Quantum Communications Research Group is involved, ensuring relevance beyond PRISM.
Tuesday, 21 October 2025
Recent research work by the Quantum Communications Research Group was recently accepted as part of the proceedings for the Thirteenth International Symposium on Computing and Networking (CANDAR 2025), which will be held in Yamagata, Japan, from November 25 to 28, 2025.
The paper, titled 'GPU implementation of binary and non-binary LDPC decoding,' describes an implementation for a CUDA-accelerated LDPC decoder for binary and non-binary alphabets, which is evaluated against a number of other implementations.
The full abstract of the paper is as follows:
Since their rediscovery in the 1990s, Low-Density Parity-Check (LDPC) codes have dominated the field of capacity-approaching error correcting codes, and are currently used in a number of practical applications. The recent use of these codes in quantum key distribution (QKD) systems often requires much larger codeword sizes than previously considered, and has renewed interest in LDPC codes with non-binary alphabets. Both aspects introduce a significant increase in computational complexity, so that real-time implementation in practical QKD systems remains a challenge. In this work we propose a CUDA-accelerated LDPC decoder for binary and non-binary alphabets, evaluating its performance in comparison to a reference CPU implementation and to earlier GPU and CPU implementations, for a range of field sizes and codeword lengths.
This work, performed as part of the SQUIRE and QSNP projects, furthers progress in the development of efficient error correction techniques.
Stay tuned for further updates in this area by the Quantum Communications Research Group!
Tuesday, 3 June 2025
Prof. Johann Briffa, Principal Investigator within the Quantum Communications Group, was interviewed by Josef Bonello on NET TV's 'Ġimgħa b'Ġimgħa' programme. During the discussion, Prof. Briffa provided an overview of the main quantum technologies, with a focus on communications, the meaning behind the term "quantum," and the work being done in Malta through a number of projects, including SQUIRE.
The interview is the latest in efforts by the Quantum Communications research group to broaden the knowledge of the general public about quantum technologies, its importance, and what is being done at national and international levels.
Friday, 1 November 2024
The SQUIRE project, aiming to develop more efficient error correction codes for embedded devices, was granted funding by Science Malta and the Malta Digital Innovation Authority, through the ‘R&I Thematic Programmes: Digital Technologies Programme.'
SQUIRE will span two years, and aims to address the challenge posed by quantum computers to traditional cryptography by advancing Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) systems.
More information can be found in the About section. Stay tuned for more updates on the project in the coming weeks and months!
