Quantum key distribution protocol using dense coding of three-qubit W state

The three-qubit W state, with an important feature that each pair of it's qubits has the same and maximum amount of bipartite entanglement, can be reduced to an entangled 2-qubit system if one of its qubits is lost. Recently, Xue et al. proposed a three-party quantum secret sharing (QSS) protocol based on the three-qubit W state [Chinese Phys. 15, 7 (2006)]. Also, Joo et al. proposed a pair-wise quantum key distribution protocol among three users based on a special measurement on the three-qubit W state [eprint arXiv:quant-ph/0204003v2 (2002)]. This study aims to propose a novel quantum key distribution protocol (QKDP) for arbitrary two communications based on the dense coding and the special measurement of three-qubit W state with the X basis and the Z basis.