Turning THz Communications into Reality: Status on Technology, Standardization and Regulation

Abstract

Already a couple of years ago THz communications have not only become an attractive new research area on channel modeling but also triggered a couple of projects heading to develop appropriate technological solutions to enable the setup of hardware demonstrators. Also discussions and activities in standardization and regulation already took off. In October 2017, IEEE published Std. IEEE 802.15.3d-2017 the worldwide first wireless communications standard operating in the 300 GHz frequency band. In parallel to the standardization process activities at the ITU-R level targeting on the provision of an appropriate regulatory framework at the World Radio Conference 2019 (WRC-2019) via a dedicated agenda item have taken off. This paper provides a brief overview on the current status of the development of THz Communication systems focusing on recent results on advanced channel characterization at 300 GHz, hardware demonstrators operating in this frequency range, the past and current activities at IEEE 802 and the WRC 2019 preparations.

A Baseline Roadmap for Advanced Wireless Research Beyond 5G

“…This is anticipated to underpin the MEVO target. For the 5G LEVO, we extrapolate the MEVO target next to 1000 GHz (1 THz) in line with the active research interest in sub-THz communications detected in the wireless research community [5,6,13,14].…”

“…This cap is already lifted in the upcoming Rel-17, but there has not been yet an agreement on the new cap, whether it will be for example 100 GHz or 250 GHz. In front of ITU-R World Radio Conference (WRC) 2019, a compatibility study for the frequency range 275-450 GHz has been performed, for studying the coexistence of fixed services, land mobile services and radio astronomy services [5,6]. Parts of this range will most likely be identified as future IMT-bands, supporting our MEVO target.…”

Potential key technologies for 6G mobile communications

“…In addition, ITU has formally designated 0.12-0.2 THz for wireless communications [29] and has just identified applications in the frequency range of 275-450 GHz in ITU-R WRC-19. However, the detailed rules and regulations for this new spectrum are neither well developed nor with a globally unified understanding.…”

THz Radio Communication: Link Budget Analysis toward 6G

“…These are key questions for 6G community in coming years. To boost the technology advancement, IEEE 802.15.3d has specified a physical layer for High Data Rate Wireless Multi-Media Networks operating in frequency range 252−325 GHz with eight different channel bandwidths from 2.16 GHz up to 69.12 GHz [7]. In this paper, we focus in 300 GHz band operation in the link budget analysis and extend the consideration into small form factor devices.…”

“…Potential use cases for THz band communications include wireless backhauling/fronthauling, close proximity communication systems, wireless links between servers inside a data center, and very high data rate connections needed for future 6G indoor services. Bit rate requirement may vary from 10 to 100 Gbps and even up to 1 Tbps with holographic type communications [1,7]. For the link budget calculations, we select primary link design parameters as follows: carrier frequency is 300 GHz, system bandwidth 30 GHz, and target bit rate 100 Gbps.…”