Over the past two decades, even though considerable progress has been made in providing ubiquitous wireless connectivity, the actual data rates available today fall far short of what is required by next generation applications. Examples of such applications include immersive virtual reality (VR) that can enable remote surgery, instant and on-demand upgrades to the intelligence of self-driving vehicles to enhance safety, and real-time backup to the cloud of digital video data which has numerous commercial applications. All of these applications require extremely high wireless data rates that cannot be delivered by any of the present-day wireless technologies. This project explores the problem of utilizing the terahertz spectrum to provide these data rates. Unfortunately, this part of the radio spectrum suffers many impairments such as blockage and molecular absorption. This project will develop new methods to overcome these challenges by developing novel communication architectures and algorithms. The benefits to society are many including enabling true remote health care, enhancing safety of autonomous vehicles, and providing very high bandwidth wireless connections that can form the basis for a whole class of new applications in future generation wireless networks.
This proposal seeks to study how Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) techniques can be utilized at terahertz frequencies. Given the specific idiosyncrasies of terahertz propagation, the proposal will use measurements and modeling to address challenges arising from poor signal propagation. In addition, the proposal will develop novel optical and hybrid MIMO technologies for terahertz. The specific objectives for the research are: perform measurements to model Massive MIMO systems for terahertz; analyze MIMO performance given various types of channel impairments such as obstructed antennas and sub-optimal spacing; study optical-MIMO and hybrid MIMO for terahertz; using Matlab simulations and models demonstrate multi-terabit/sec communications. The eventual outcomes of this work will include terahertz models for MIMO, optical-MIMO and hybrid MIMO including a database of channel measurements. The project will also produce Matlab software to study different communication scenarios.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
