Lumino wins Innovate UK funded contract for Project Timelink

Lumino Technologies, an SME specialising in free-space optical and quantum communications, has been awarded a contract to develop free space quantum time transfer (QTT) technology.  

Today, global time synchronisation is dependent on satellite signals which are vulnerable to jamming and spoofing, exposing critical sectors like telecoms, finance, power grids and defence to significant disruption. Quantum time transfer techniques enable robust, secure, ultra-precise synchronization between sites using quantum communications.  

TimeLink is an Innovate-UK funded project focused on quantum time transfer. It will develop a range of critical technologies, build prototype subsystems and explore a variety of QTT applications. Innovate UK awarded the contracts for the Quantum Sensing Missions Primer as part of significant investment in quantum for the future. Read more about this here. 

In the project, which is primed by Xairos, Lumino will leverage its high-performance entangled photon sources to build and characterise a free space quantum time transfer demonstrator. Other project partners are Vodafone, Duality Quantum Photonics, Cranfield University and Quantum Technology Associates. 

Omar Iqbal, Founder at Lumino Technologies, said, “Quantum Time Transfer is an important early application of quantum communications with the potential to address key vulnerabilities in strategic sectors. Lumino technologies is excited to participate in developing this application of its free space quantum networking technologies.”