Tearhertz Wireless Could Make Possible Linking Satellites as Swift as Fibre-Optic Links

The scientists from the Hiroshima University, National Institute of Communications and Information Technology, and Panasonic Corporation announced the introduction of a terahertz transmitter capable of transferring digital data at a speed of more than 100 gigabits per second, which is equal to 0.1 terabit over a singular channel employing the 300-Ghz band.

Such technology allows the movement of data rates 10 times or more rapid than that offered by the fifth-generation mobile networks, expected to appear around 2020. Details of such technology will be introduced at the International Solid State Circuits Conference 2017 to be organized from till February 9 in San Francisco, California.

The THz band is a novel and extended frequency resource expected to be employed for future ultrahigh speed wireless communications. The study group has introduced a transmitter that accomplishes a communication speed of 105 gigabits per second employing the frequency range from 280 GHz to 315 GHz. Such ranges of frequencies are presently unallocated but fall within the frequency range from 275 GHz to 450 GHz, whose usage is to be discussed at the World Radio Communication Conference or WRC 2019 under the International Telecommunication Union Radio Communication Section.

Last year, the team illustrated that the speed of a wireless link in the 300-GHz band could be greatly extended by employing quadrature amplitude modulation or QAM. This year, they revealed six times higher per-channel data rate, exceeding 100 gigabits per second for the first time as an integrated circuit based transmitter. At such data rate, the entire content on a DVD or digital versatile disk can be transmitted in a fraction of a second.

“This year, we introduced a transmitter with 10 time’s bigger transmission power than the conventional versions. This made it feasible that the per-channel data rate above 100 Gigabits at 300 GHz,” says Lecturer Minoru, Hiroshima University. “We mainly talk about wireless data rates in megabits per second or the gigabits per second. But we are now approaching terabits per second using a plain simple single communication channel. Fiber optics realized ultrahigh speed wired links, and wireless links have been left far behind. Terahertz could offer ultrahigh speed links to satellites as well that can just be wireless. This could, in turn, significantly boost in-flight network connection speeds, for instance. Other feasible applications comprise fast download from the content servers to mobile devices and ultrafast links between base stations,” says Lecturer Fujishima.

According to Professor Fujishima, another absolutely novel possibility offered by terahertz wireless is high data-rate minimum latency communications. Optical fibres are prepared of glass and the speed of light slows down in fibers. The research team plans to further develop 300 GHz ultrahigh speed wireless circuits