Quantum Version of the k-NN Classifier Based on a Quantum Sorting Algorithm

In this work a quantum sorting algorithm with adaptable requirements of memory and circuit depth is introduced, and is used to develop a new quantum version of the classical machine learning algorithm known as k-nearest neighbors (k-NN). Both the efficiency and performance of this new quantum version of the k-NN algorithm are compared to those of the classical k-NN and another quantum version proposed by Schuld et al. Results show that the efficiency of both quantum algorithms is similar to each other and superior to that of the classical algorithm. On the other hand, the performance of the proposed quantum k-NN algorithm is superior to the one proposed by Schuld et al. and similar to that of the classical k-NN.