1 Gb/s wireless link at 200 GHz using heterodyne detection

A wireless data communications link operating at a carrier frequency of 200 GHz and a data rate of 1 Gb/s is demonstrated. Photonic carrier generation and modulation was employed at the transmitter, with the optical signal converted to millimeter waves using a uni-traveling carrier photodiode. Heterodyne detection was used to demodulate the signal, the first time, to our knowledge, that this approach has been used for Gb/s data on a carrier above 100 GHz. Baseband data was recovered by offline processing of a sampled version of the intermediate frequency signal captured by a real-time oscilloscope. A bit error ratio of 10−3, sufficient for reliable transmission with forward error correction, was obtained for a received power of approximately −52 dBm.