Broadband electro-optic intensity modulators are essential to convert electrical signals to the optical domain. The growing interest in THz wireless applications demands modulators with frequency responses to the sub-THz range, high power handling and very low nonlinear distortions, simultaneously. However, a modulator with all those characteristics has not been demonstrated to date.Here we experimentally demonstrate that plasmonic modulators do not trade off any performance parameter, featuringat the same timea short length of 10s of micrometers, record-high flat frequency response beyond 500 GHz, high power handling and high linearity, and we use them to create a sub-THz radio-over-fiber analog optical link. These devices have the potential to become a new tool in the general field of microwave photonics, making the sub-THz range accessible to e.g. 5G wireless communications, antenna remoting, IoT, sensing, and more.This document provides supporting information to "500 GHz plasmonic Mach-Zehnder modulator enabling sub-THz microwave photonics". We describe details on the experimental setups employed to measure the frequency response of the modulator, over two different frequency ranges (from 20 to 70 GHz and from 200 to 500 GHz), and the procedure used to extract the modulator response. We describe the setup and procedure employed to measure the third-order intermodulation distortions via two-tone tests. Finally, we report details on the radio-over-fiber link experiment in the 220-325 GHz window.

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SUMMARYThis contribution presents a full MMIC chip set, transmit and receive RF frontend and data transmission experiments at a carrier frequency of 300 GHz and with data rates of up to 64 Gbit/s. The radio is dedicated to future high data rate indoor wireless communication, serving application scenarios such as smart offices, data centers and home theaters. The paper reviews the underlying high speed transistor and MMIC process, the performance of the quadrature transmitter and receiver, as well as the local oscillator generation by means of frequency multiplication. Initial transmission experiments in a single-input single-output setup and zero-IF transmit and receive scheme achieve up to 64 Gbit/s data rates with QPSK modulation. The paper discusses the current performance limitations of the RF frontend and will outline paths for improvements in view of achieving 100 Gbit/s capability.

This contribution presents a full chip set dedicated to high data rate indoor wireless communication at a carrier frequency of 300 GHz. The analog frontend consists of a three-chip solution, namely a transmitter, receiver and local oscillator frequency multiplier. The active millimeter-wave monolithic integrated circuits are realized in a GaAs-based metamorphic high electron mobility transistor technology. The transmitter MMIC achieves a maximum output power of 3.6 dBm and an RF frequency range of 270 to 314 GHz. The receiver MMIC shows 11.4 dB conversion gain without IF amplification in an RF frequency range from 292 to 314 GHz

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