无线通信应用太赫兹技术研究进展

Research Progress of Terahertz Technology for Wireless Communication Applications

在过去的几年里,由于不同频段电磁频谱的传播特性差异、对带宽需求以及技术利用能力提升,无线通信应用的电磁频谱不断提高。在通信领域,为满足无线数据传输需求的爆炸性增长,特别是5G通信的发展,毫米波中低频段应用已经成功实现工程化并开始商业化。而对于以光波为载体的更高频率电磁波的光通信,也已经发展了几十年。在常规无线电波(毫米波)与常规光学(远红外)之间,存在着一段长期未能有效利用的空闲频谱资源,目前被统称为太赫兹频段(0.1~10 THz)。太赫兹频段在高速无线通信领域具备明显优势,成为有潜力的6G通信核心技术。可以预见,对这项技术的使用将助力6G通信实现网络全覆盖、高度智能化及网络安全性全面提升的愿景。文章主要关注通信领域,重点介绍了太赫兹频段的特点、构建太赫兹系统功能的器件类型与工艺集成实现技术。最后,预测了太赫兹通信技术的一些应用场景,进而显示出该技术对通信领域和人们日常生活的促进作用。

In the past few years, the rising electromagnetic spectrum for wireless communications has been driven by the differences in the propagation characteristics of different bands, the demand for bandwidth, and the improved ability to utilize technology. In the field of communications, millimeter wave(mmW) low and medium frequency bands have been successfully engineered and started to be commercially deployed to meet the explosive growth in demand for wireless data transmission, especially for 5 G communications. The optical communication for higher frequency electromagnetic waves with light waves as the carrier has also been maturely developed and applied for decades. Between conventional radio waves(millimeter waves) and conventional optics(far infrared), there exists a long-unused free spectrum resource, which is now collectively referred to as the terahertz(THz) band(0.1~10 THz). Due to the obvious advantages of the terahertz band in the field of high speed wireless communication, terahertz communication technology has the potential to become the core technology of 6 G communication. It is foreseeable that the use of this technology will help 6 G communication to realize the vision of full network coverage, high intelligence, and overall improvement of network security. This paper focused on the communication field, highly lighting the characteristics of the terahertz band, the types of devices, and process integration implementation technologies for building terahertz system functions. Finally, this paper predicted some application scenarios of terahertz communication technology, and then showed the contribution of this technology to the communication field and people’s daily life.