The UK Government has listed Future Communication as one of its five priority technologies for the future. Many developing technologies such as 6G, holographic communication, virtual reality and the autonomation of vehicles, farming and factories etc. require communication links capable of providing data rates far greater than can currently be achieved with 5G technology.
Maximum 5G data rates are ~20 Gigabits/s, whereas 6G data rates are predicted to reach as high as 1 Terabit/s. For context, this would enable you to download every episode of Friends in less than 0.2 seconds. THz frequencies offer a pathway to achieving these extremely high data rates, particularly for short range applications.
Data rate = Signal Bandwidth x Number of Bits per ‘symbol’ (packet of data)
By going to these extremely high frequencies (5-10 times greater than highest 5G frequencies), we can access large bandwidths that allow us to transmit far more symbols per second, therefore increasing the data rate.
Though THz communication offers this huge advantage, it is still a developing technology and solutions need to be found to issues such as the low power of available sources, the directivity and steering of THz beams and absorption by environmental obstacles such as people, buildings, cars etc. To support both academia and industry in developing these solutions, NPL has set up a THz Comms testbed.
The NPL THz Communications testbed, developed in conjunction with Keysight and the University of Surrey, can produce and detect THz data signals in the frequency band 0.22-0.33 THz, a key area of interest for THz Communications. Over-The-Air (OTA) data transmission has been demonstrated for beam paths up to 6m in length and data rates as high as 120 Gigabits/s over a 3m Non–Line-Of-Sight beam path (3 seasons of Friends in a second). This is, to the best of our knowledge, the highest THz data rate over this kind of distance ever reported! Using this testbed, we will be able to characterise the performance of THz devices being developed at both the research and commercial level.
This testbed allows for academics and companies of all sizes to test the performance of their devices in a known testbed without having to go to the considerable time, effort and expense of setting up one themselves, making the development of such devices much faster and cheaper. NPL have expertise in THz science, communication technologies including Over-The-Air (OTA) and fibre-based technologies, digital signal processing, material characterisation and much more, which can be utilised alongside the testbed to characterise the performance of all manner of THz devices. For example, the testbed has been used to characterise hollow core THz optical fibre samples produced by the University of Southampton which can be used to transmit a THz data signal through cluttered environments where an OTA signal would be blocked. The testbed can be accessed via the Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) THz Facility, the Analysis for Innovation programme and direct contact with NPL.
Through this partnership we are bringing Keysight solutions and experts together with scientists from NPL and the University of Surrey to unlock the true potential of 6G.
Mosaab Abughalib, Senior Research Director and General Manager for Keysight's Network Emulation Group