To accommodate the demand of exponentially increased global wireless data traffic, the prospective data rates for wireless communication in the market place will soon reach 100 Gbit/s and beyond. In the lab environment, wireless transmission throughput has been elevated to the level of over 100 Gbit/s attributed to the development of photonic-assisted millimeter wave (MMW) and THz technologies. However, most of recent demonstrations with over 100 Gbit/s data rates are based on spatial or frequency division multiplexing techniques, resulting in increased system's complexity and energy consumption. Here, we experimentally demonstrate a single channel 0.4 THz photonic-wireless link achieving a net data rate of beyond 100 Gbit/s by using a single pair of THz emitter and receiver, without employing any spatial/frequency division multiplexing techniques. The high throughput up to 106 Gbit/s within a single THz channel is enabled by combining spectrally efficient modulation format, ultra-broadband THz transceiver and advanced digital signal processing (DSP) routine. Besides that, our demonstration from system-wide implementation viewpoint also features high transmission stability, and hence shows its great potential to not only decrease the system's complexity, but also meet the requirements of prospective data rates for bandwidth-hungry short-range wireless applications.

The proliferation of wireless broadband services have significantly raised the demand for high data rates. Due to the limited bandwidth of radio frequency (RF) bands that are currently in use for communication purposes, the choice of the 'Terahertz (THz) frequency region' (0.3-10 THz) is getting favored thanks to its merits of bringing together wireless and optical communications with photonics technologies. We report on an experimental demonstration of a hybrid THz photonic-wireless transmission based on a THz orthogonal polarization dual-antenna scheme. Probabilistic shaped 64-ary quadrature amplitude modulation based orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (64QAM-OFDM) modulation format is used to realize high transmission rate. A potential total system throughput of 612.65 Gbit/s (around 2×300 Gbit/s line rate) with an average net spectral efficiency of 4.445 bit/s/Hz per antenna is successfully achieved.

With the development of various emerging technologies, the capacity of current wireless communication system is gradually saturated, and terahertz (THz) and orbital angular momentum (OAM) have hereby attracted much attention as two key technologies to increase the communication capacity. In this paper, a THz-OAM wireless communication system operating at 100 GHz based on a transmissive metasurface is proposed for the first time to the best of our knowledge. The operation principle of multiplexing metasurface which allows simultaneous generation of two coaxial OAM beams at different modes of l = 1 & –1 is studied. To meet the requirements of wireless communication and OAM multiplexing, a C-shaped transmissive unit is designed with characteristics of broad bandwidth, low transmission loss and insensitive to the change of incident angle. Experimental measurements show that the generated two OAM beams feature high mode purity, providing the excellent orthogonality of modes. The generated two OAM modes are also employed as two OAM channels to transmit two independent communication signals with on-off keying (OOK) modulation, and a data rate of 10 Gbit/s is achieved at a transmission distance of 300 mm (100 λ of 100 GHz) with bit error rates (BERs) below 3.8 × 10 ^-3 . This work verifies the feasibility of the multiplexing metasurface supporting wireless communication, and makes THz-OAM wireless communication systems potential for future large capacity wireless services.

Recently, remarkable efforts have been made in developing wireless communication systems at ultrahigh data rates, with radio frequency (RF) carriers in the millimeter wave (30–300 GHz) and/or in the terahertz (THz, >300 GHz) bands. Converged technologies combining both the electronics and the photonics show great potential to provide feasible solutions with superior performance compared to conventional RF technologies. However, technical challenges remain to be overcome in order to support high data rates with considerably feasible wireless distances for practical applications, particularly in the THz region. In this work, we present an experimental demonstration of a single-channel THz radio-over-fiber (RoF) system operating at 350 GHz, achieving beyond 100 Gbit/s data rate over a 10-km fiber plus a >20-m wireless link, without using any THz amplifiers. This achievement is enabled by using an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing signal with a probabilistic-shaped 16-ary quadrature amplitude modulation format, a pair of highly directive Cassegrain antennas, and advanced digital signal processing techniques. This work pushes the THz RoF technology one step closer to ultrahigh-speed indoor wireless applications and serves as an essential segment of the converged fiber-wireless access networks in the beyond 5G era.

Since about one and half centuries ago, at the dawn of modern communications, the radio and the optics have been two separate electromagnetic spectrum regions to carry data. Differentiated by their generation/detection methods and propagation properties, the two paths have evolved almost independently until today. The optical technologies dominate the long-distance and high-speed terrestrial wireline communications through fiber-optic telecom systems, whereas the radio technologies have mainly dominated the short- to medium-range wireless scenarios. Now, these two separate counterparts are both facing a sign of saturation in their respective roadmap horizons, particularly in the segment of free-space communications. The optical technologies are extending into the mid-wave and long-wave infrared (MWIR and LWIR) regimes to achieve better propagation performance through the dynamic atmospheric channels. Radio technologies strive for higher frequencies like the millimeter-wave (MMW) and sub-terahertz (sub-THz) to gain broader bandwidth. The boundary between the two is becoming blurred and intercrossed. During the past few years, we witnessed technological breakthroughs in free-space transmission supporting very high data rates, many achieved with the assistance of photonics. This paper focuses on such photonics-assisted free-space communication technologies in both the lower and upper sides of the THz gap and provides a detailed review of recent research and development activities on some of the key enabling technologies. Our recent experimental demonstrations of high-speed free-space transmissions in both frequency regions are also presented as examples to show the system requirements for device characteristics and digital signal processing (DSP) performance.

In this letter, we experimentally demonstrate terahertz (THz) photonic wireless transmission of high-speed quadrature-phase-shift-keying (QPSK) and 16 quadrature amplitude modulation (16-QAM) signals in the 350-GHz band, with an effort to extend the wireless reach of ultrafast 100 Gbit/s. In the experiment, a narrowband unitraveling-carrier photodiode (UTC-PD) is used for heterodyne generation of THz communication signals, which is transparent to optical modulation formats. Experimental results show that 30 GBd/s QPSK (60 Gbit/s) and 25 GBd/s 16-QAM signals (100 Gbit/s) are successfully transmitted over a 350-GHz wireless link with an extended distance of 2 m. This enhancement is enabled by combining the techniques of employing cutting-edge narrowband UTC-PD as the photomixing THz emitter, spectrally efficient modulation format and advanced digital signal processing algorithms. The achievement makes 100 Gbit/s THz wireless communication systems promising for future smart wireless services.