RAPID Quantum Detection and Demodulation of Covert Communications: Breaking the Noise Limit with Solid-State Spin Sensors

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2509.08171v1
• Date: Tue, 09 Sep 2025 22:12:28 GMT
• Title: RAPID Quantum Detection and Demodulation of Covert Communications: Breaking the Noise Limit with Solid-State Spin Sensors
• Authors: Amirhossein Taherpour, Abbas Taherpour, Tamer Khattab,
• Abstract summary: We introduce a comprehensive framework for the detection and demodulation of covert electromagnetic signals using solid-state spin sensors.<n>Our approach, named RAPID, is a two-stage hybrid strategy that leverages nitrogen-vacancy centers to operate below the classical noise floor.<n>This work establishes a theoretically rigorous and practically viable pathway for deploying quantum sensors in security-critical applications such as electronic warfare and covert surveillance.
• Score: 5.246986428523558
• License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/
• Abstract: We introduce a comprehensive framework for the detection and demodulation of covert electromagnetic signals using solid-state spin sensors. Our approach, named RAPID, is a two-stage hybrid strategy that leverages nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers to operate below the classical noise floor employing a robust adaptive policy via imitation and distillation. We first formulate the joint detection and estimation task as a unified stochastic optimal control problem, optimizing a composite Bayesian risk objective under realistic physical constraints. The RAPID algorithm solves this by first computing a robust, non-adaptive baseline protocol grounded in the quantum Fisher information matrix (QFIM), and then using this baseline to warm-start an online, adaptive policy learned via deep reinforcement learning (Soft Actor-Critic). This method dynamically optimizes control pulses, interrogation times, and measurement bases to maximize information gain while actively suppressing non-Markovian noise and decoherence. Numerical simulations demonstrate that the protocol achieves a significant sensitivity gain over static methods, maintains high estimation precision in correlated noise environments, and, when applied to sensor arrays, enables coherent quantum beamforming that achieves Heisenberg-like scaling in precision. This work establishes a theoretically rigorous and practically viable pathway for deploying quantum sensors in security-critical applications such as electronic warfare and covert surveillance.

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