Ubiquitous Quantum Communications

''It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future'' - Mark Twain.Yet, Gordon Moore's predictions - known as Moore's Law - made in 1965 remained valid for half a century!As a result, semi-conductor technology is approaching nano-scaleintegration and on this journey to quantum futures the travellerenters the world of quantum physics, where many of the phenomena arerather different from those of classical physics. This proposalcontributes to the 'quantum jig-saw puzzle', with special emphasis onthe enabling techniques of ubiquitous quantum communications,potentially leading to job- and wealth-creation on a similar scale tothe economic benefits of flawless classic wireless communications.My ultimate goal as a telecommunications researcher is to buildbridges across the exciting fields of quantum physics, mathematics,computer science and hardware aspects of quantum communications.Specifically, the three Key Challenges of Work-Packages 1-3 on the newconcept of Pareto-optimum error control, secret key-distribution,network coding and entanglement distribution will lead to creatingstepping-stones for the Grand Challenge of Work-Package 4, dedicatedto the support of quantum-communications for aircraft 'above theclouds'.Methodology: theoretical performance bounds will be established based on the hitherto unexplored Pareto-optimum quantum design philosophy using multi-component optimization. Explicitly, thePareto-front of optimal solutions will be found off-line, where noneof the conflicting parameters, such as the bit-error ratio, transmitpower, delay and implementation complexity can be improved withoutdegrading some of the others. A suite of new soft-decision aidedcomponents will be conceived by invoking code-specific quantumsyndrome decoders to be designed for iterative soft-informationexchange without perturbing the fragile quantum states. Finally,quantum-communications solutions will be created for drones and planes.