Long-range High-Speed THz-Wireless Transmission in the 300 GHz Band
Carlos Castro, Robert Elschner, Thomas Merkle, Colja Schubert, Ronald Freund
Abstract
In the last few years, wireless communication systems have demonstrated the potential to achieve high-speed data transmission by leveraging a large contiguous spectrum and wide-bandwidth electronic/photonic components. This led to the proposed concept of THz-wireless fiber extenders, an approach in which the THz-wireless link is embedded in existing fiber-based infrastructure to provide an alternative solution for areas where the installation of fibers is not economic or technically not feasible. To demonstrate the potential of this hybrid THz-wireless / fiber-optical approach, we have set up two long-range high-speed THz wireless links. The first Line-of-Sight (LoS) link bridges a distance of 500 meters and the second one stretches over 1 kilometer. Using MMIC-based THz frontends in the 300 GHz band, employing a single-polarization approach, and assuming an SD-FEC threshold corresponding to a 25% overhead, we were able to transmit a maximum net data rate of 76 Gb/s (16-QAM) and of 44 Gb/s (4-QAM) over the 500 m and 1 km LoS link, respectively. Moreover, we have started to investigate the effect of weather conditions on the transmission performance. In this context, we have observed the Q-factor over 10 hours of continuous operation.