Carral López, Gabriel MaríaLiñares Beiras, JesúsMateo, Eduardo F.Prieto Blanco, Xesús2025-11-272025-11-272023-12-01Carral, G.M.; Liñares, J.; Mateo, E.F.; Prieto-Blanco, X. Bell-State-Exchange-Parity-Based Protocol for Efficient Autocompensation of Quantum Key Distribution Encoded in Polarization or Spatial Modes. Appl. Sci. 2023, 13, 12907. https://doi.org/10.3390/app132312907https://hdl.handle.net/10347/44049We analyze autocompensation possibilities in entanglement-based QKD protocols. In particular, we study the seminal BBM92 protocol and find that an autocompensating technique is possible, although with severe limitations. This prompts the introduction of a different, more practical protocol based on Bell state exchange parity (BSEP), which allows for intrinsic autocompensation of optical fiber perturbations in various two-dimensional fiber-optic encodings while retaining advantageous MDI-QKD characteristics. We present the BSEP protocol in detail, describing both the quantum light propagation and the optical hardware requirements. Finally, we analyze its security, computing its expected performance through the key rate.eng© 2023 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)Attribution 4.0 Internationalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Quantum key distributionOptical fibersAutocompensationSpace-division multiplexingPhotonic integrated circuitsjournal article10.3390/app132312907open access