LuxQuanta at the Mobile World Congress 2024: Live QKD Demostration

March 2024, Barcelona - For another year, LuxQuanta attended the Mobile World Congress with its pod, which was part of the Quantum Flagship’s shared booth, the European Quantum Zone.

This year, LuxQuanta showcased a real Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) demo within the booth, encrypting a real-time videoconference with solely quantum-generated cryptographic keys.

As the leading global event for connectivity, the MWC is seeing a significant surge in interest from attendees year over year in Quantum Technologies. LuxQuanta remains committed to attending this crucial event and aims to be a leading voice in Quantum Technologies.

The Quantum Flagship Initiative

The Quantum Flagship is Europe's most ambitious effort to enhance and fortify the quantum ecosystem across the continent. Its mission is to support and promote the activities of initiatives and companies within the quantum field. To achieve this, the Quantum Flagship introduced the EuropeQuantum Zone—a collaborative booth designed for startups and initiatives actively involved in quantum technologies, providing them a platform to display their innovations.

Growing Interest in Quantum

The previous year underscored the attendees' growing fascination with anything quantum-related. Conferences and panel discussions on the subject were in high demand, often leaving no room for additional attendees. LuxQuanta was overwhelmed by the interest shown during the 2023 event, accompanied by LuxQUanta’s first commercial product launch.

Despite the prevailing AI trends and narrative at this year's congress, Quantum Technologies increased even more in 2024. However, we foresee quantum surpassing AI in importance shortly, reflecting its escalating significance within the tech industry and the security of the world’s communications.

LuxQuanta's Milestones and Collaborations

As mentioned, last year represented a significant milestone for LuxQuanta as we introduced and launched our inaugural commercial product, the NOVA LQ CV-QKD system, at the show. Always looking to leverage our market presence, we explored innovative methods to demonstrate quantum cryptography's potential at this year's event.

This ambition led to a partnership with Qoolnet, a spin-off from the Polytechnic University of Madrid, to conduct a live QKD demo at the fair. The demonstration featured a quantum link (optical fibre) and two NOVA LQ CV-QKD devices that generated encryption keys using quantum physics principles. These keys encrypted a live conference during the event, showcasing quantum technologies' practical applications in real-world scenarios.


Qoolnet contributed their SDN-KMS Stack solution, which enabled efficient network and critical management and ensured keys were securely delivered to encryptors as needed.

The Demo Architecture in Detail 

This live QKD demonstration showcases a miniature QKD network. Two QKD devices, Alice and Bob, are connected through a Quantum Channel, generating quantum-based symmetric keys. These keys will then be managed and distributed to encryptors via a KMS-SDN stack software solution, ensuring quantum-secure encryption for a real-time video conference.

1. Two NOVA LQ® devices are connected through a quantum channel between points A and B, generating symmetric keys. The classical channel calibrates and maintains constant communication between endpoints.
2. The SDN-KMS Stack Platform manages the connection, requests, stores the generated keys and sends them to the upper encryption layer.
3. Third-party encryptors are allocated in the encryption layer, where the keys provided by QoolNet’s platform from the QKD devices will be used to cypher the video call information.
4. The quantum-secured communication will be done through a proprietary Videoconference app used by two laptops in a single call.

The present demo not only states the maturity level of Quantum Cryptography technologies but also that of the essential complementary technologies.

LuxQuanta's Recognition and Contributions

After being selected as one of the top 50 companies from the 4YFN contest, Vanesa Diaz, the CEO of LuxQuanta, spoke at the 4YFN stage. She shared the stage with other awarded companies, taking the opportunity to highlight the potential of Quantum Cryptography to a diverse audience not familiar with the topic and showcase the impressive team and company we are building.


As part of the Quantum Flagship, Sergi Vizcaíno, Strategy & Outreach Manager at LuxQuanta, also gave two presentations as part of the Quantum Coffee talks on  Continuous-Variable Quantum Key Distribution and the current state of the QKD market within the Quantum Flagship shared booth. 


Vanesa also participated in several panel discussions with other players in the industry, including Quside, the Cibersecurity Agency of Catalonia, and Nestlé engaged with several media interviews and participated in guided tours aimed at delving deeper into the quantum realm, further emphasizing our role as innovators in the field of quantum technologies. Concretely, the panel focuses on the current state and nature of Post-Quantum Cryptography and a general discussion on Quantum Communications and its future role in safeguarding current communications.

Institutional visits

During the event, several institutional representatives from both national and international entities visited the Quantum Flagship booth to express their support for Quantum Technologies, learn more about European initiatives, and engage with the main companies showcasing their solutions. The live Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) demonstration also served as a vital attention-grabber, sparking curiosity among the attendees.

It's worth noting that after His Majesty King Felipe VI of Spain's initial tour of the event, LuxQuanta welcomed visitors from the Government of Catalonia. Gina Tost i Faust, Secretary of Digital Policies for the Government of Catalonia, met with LuxQuanta’s CEO and other government representatives to informally discuss the current state of Quantum Cryptography in Catalonia, future initiatives, and the needs of Catalan industries for quantum-secure communications.


Furthermore, the Minister of Research and Universities, Joaquim Nadal i Farreras, expressed his support for LuxQuanta, Quside, and ICFO as Catalan leaders in the quantum sector. He highlighted the critical importance of such companies and institutions for further developing the Spanish and Catalan ecosystems, which will undoubtedly strengthen Europe’s position in quantum technologies.