In recent years, wireless data traffic has grown exponentially due to a change in the way today's society creates, shares and consumes information. This change has been accompanied by an increasing demand for higher speed wireless communication. Wireless Terabit-per-second links are expected to become a reality within the next ten years. Towards this aim, the Terahertz Band (0.1-10 THz) communication is envisioned as one of the key wireless technologies of the next decade. The THz band will help to overcome the spectrum scarcity problems and capacity limitations of current wireless networks, by providing an unprecedentedly large bandwidth. In addition, THz-band communication will enable a plethora of long-awaited applications ranging from instantaneous massive data transfer among nearby devices in Terabit Wireless Personal and Local Area Networks, to ultra-high-definition content streaming over mobile devices in 5G and beyond small cells. Nevertheless, there are several research challenges from the very-high and frequency-selective path loss of the THz-band channel and the very limited distance, which require innovative solutions and the revision of well-established concepts in wireless communication.
This project will contribute to pave the way for the development of ultra-broadband communication in the THz band. THz technology and its applications has been recently identified by DARPA as one of the four with a potential broader impact larger than the Internet itself. Ultra-broadband communication will play a major role in the society by drastically increasing the capacity of wireless networks and enabling long-awaited applications not possible with current wireless technologies. In addition, the THz band is not yet regulated. The project team is actively involved in IEEE 802.15 Wireless Personal Area Network Terahertz Task Group, whose objective is to create the first standard for this paradigm. In this project, one graduate student will be supported, and master students (as special topic students) will be involved, to become experts in this fast evolving field. The research results will be disseminated in important, first rate scientific conferences, journals and premier magazines in the field. Moreover, the proposed solutions in this project can be tailored and are useful for the lower frequencies such as the millimeter-wave systems, which can help the development progress of 5G cellular systems.
The research objective of this project is to strengthen the theoretical foundations of ultra- broadband communications in the THz band and bring the Terabit-per-second links one-step closer to reality. Our targeted breakthrough is to increase the capacity of wireless systems to reach Terabit-per-second and overcome the spectrum scarcity and capacity limitations of current wireless networks. This project will make contributions along three major thrusts. First, the concept of ultra-massive multiple-input-multiple-output is introduced to overcome the distance limitation, based on the use of the very large antenna arrays with thousands of antenna elements. The dynamic operation modes that include beamforming, spatial multiplexing and a combination of both, as well as the multi-band ultra-massive multiple-input-multiple-output will be analyzed. Second, accurate models for the three-dimensional end-to-end channel, and the three-dimensional ultra-massive multiple-input-multiple-output channel will be developed, which will provide physical insights and the guidelines for the THz band communication design. Third, by capturing the unique channel peculiarities, distance-adaptive resource allocation, and low-sampling-rate and multi-carrier synchronization schemes will be investigated for THz band communications.
