Mitigation of Routing Congestion on Data Networks: A Quantum Game Theory Approach

Because of the sustained growth of information and mobile users transmitting a great amount of data packets, modern network performances are being seriously affected by congestion problems. In fact, congestion management is a challenging task that can be roughly summarized as a trade off between transmission latency and cost. In order to contribute to solve the congestion problem on communication networks, a novel framework based on a quantum game model is proposed, where network packets compete selfishly for their fastest route. Simulations show that final network routing and traveling times achieved with the quantum version outperform those obtained with a classical game model with the same options for packet transmission for both. Pareto optimality and Nash equilibrium are studied as well as the influence of simulated and real noise in the quantum protocol. This leads to the opportunity of developing full-stack protocols that may be capable of taking advantage of the quantum properties for optimizing communication systems. Due to its generality, this game approach can be applied both in classical complex networks and in future quantum networks in order to maximize the performance of the quantum internet.