Long-range high-speed THz-wireless transmission in the 300 GHz Band

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.