Utilizing terahertz band for local and personal area wireless communication systems

Abstract

User demand on wireless communications is growing every day, however frequency spectrum is a scarce source that cannot infinitely supply the ever-increasing communication demand. Most of the research activities addressing this problem have traditionally been focused on spectral efficiency improvement and signalling overhead minimization efforts, therefore improvement in these domains is tougher than ever. The other main method for throughput enhancement is increasing the operation frequency, and towards this end, the utilization of terahertz band for the next-generation of wireless communications systems is investigated in this paper. Following a general overview, an indoor computer simulation is set up to reveal both the feasibility and advantages of THz band compared to the currently used frequency spectrum. The results show that, peak data rates on the order of 10 Gb/s is possible over low-THz band; however, there are hindering issues such as coverage area and low-cost device availability.