A 3-D Hybrid Dynamic Channel Model for Indoor THz Communications

To meet the demands for the explosive growth of mobile data rates and scarcity of spectrum resources in the near future,the terahertz(THz)band has widely been regarded as a key enabler for the upcoming beyond fifth-generation(B5G)wireless communications.An accurate THz channel model is crucial for the design and deployment of the THz wireless communication systems.In this paper,a three-dimensional(3-D)dynamic indoor THz channel model is proposed by means of combining deterministic and stochastic modeling approaches.Clusters are randomly distributed in the indoor environment and each ray is characterized with consideration of molecular absorption and diffuse scattering.Moreover,we present the dynamic generation procedure of the channel impulse responses(CIRs).Statistical properties are investigated to indicate the non-stationarity and feasibility of the proposed model.Finally,by comparing with delay spread and K-factor results from the measurements,the utility of the proposed channel model is verified.

Photonics-assisted THz wireless communication enabled by wide-bandwidth packaged backilluminated modified uni-traveling-carrier photodiode

This paper presents a wide-bandwidth back-illuminated modified uni-traveling-carrier photodiode(MUTC-PD)packaged with standard WR-5 rectangular waveguide for high-speed wireless communications.With optimized epitaxy structure and coplanar waveguide electrodes,the fabricated 4-μm-diameter PD exhibits ultra-flat frequency response and high saturation power.Integrated passive circuits including low-loss bias-tee and E-plane probe are designed to package the PD into a compact module with waveguide output.The packaged PD module has demonstrated a flat frequency response with fluctuations within±2.75 d B over a broadband of 140–220 GHz and a high saturated output power of-7.8 d Bm(166μW)at 140 GHz.For wireless communication applications,the packaged PD is used to implement 1-m free space transmission at carrier frequencies of 150.5 and 210.5 GHz,with transmission rates of 75 and 90 Gbps,respectively.

Reconfigurable intelligent surface based hybrid precoding for THz communications

Benefiting from the growth of the bandwidth,Terahertz(THz)communication can support the new application with explosive requirements of the ultra-high-speed rates for future 6G wireless systems.In order to compensate for the path loss of high frequency,massive Multiple-Input Multiple-Output(MIMO)can be utilized for high array gains by beamforming.However,the existing THz communication with massive MIMO has remarkably high energy consumption because a large number of analog phase shifters should be used to realize the analog beamforming.To solve this problem,a Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface(RIS)based hybrid precoding architecture for THz communication is developed in this paper,where the energy-hungry phased array is replaced by the energy-efficient RIS to realize the analog beamforming of the hybrid precoding.Then,based on the proposed RIS-based architecture,a sum-rate maximization problem for hybrid precoding is investigated.Since the phase shifts implemented by RIS in practice are often discrete,this sum-rate maximization problem with a non-convex constraint is challenging.Next,the sum-rate maximization problem is reformulated as a parallel Deep Neural Network(DNN)based classification problem,which can be solved by the proposed low-complexity Deep Learning based Multiple Discrete Classification(DL-MDC)hybrid precoding scheme.Finally,we provide numerous simulation results to show that the proposed DL-MDC scheme works well both in the theoretical Saleh-Valenzuela channel model and practical 3GPP channel model.Compared with existing iterative search algorithms,the proposed DL-MDC scheme significantly reduces the runtime with a negligible performance loss.

Wideband Channel Estimation for THz Massive MIMO

Terahertz(THz)communication is considered to be a promising technology for future 6G network.To overcome the severe attenuation and relieve the high power consumption,massive multipleinput multiple-output(MIMO)with hybrid precoding has been widely considered for THz communication.However,accurate wideband channel estimation,which is essential for hybrid precoding,is challenging in THz massive MIMO systems.The existing wideband channel estimation schemes based on the ideal assumption of common sparse channel support will suffer from a severe performance loss due to the beam split effect.In this paper,we propose a beam split pattern detection based channel estimation scheme to realize reliable wideband channel estimation in THz massive MIMO systems.Specifically,a comprehensive analysis on the angle-domain sparse structure of the wideband channel is provided by considering the beam split effect.Based on the analysis,we define a series of index sets called as beam split patterns,which are proved to have a one-to-one match to different physical channel directions.Inspired by this one-to-one match,we propose to estimate the physical channel direction by exploiting beam split patterns at first.Then,the sparse channel supports at different subcarriers can be obtained by utilizing a support detection window.This support detection window is generated by expanding the beam split pattern which is determined by the obtained physical channel direction.The above estimation procedure will be repeated path by path until all path components are estimated.Finally,the wideband channel can be recovered by calculating the elements on the total sparse channel support at all subcarriers.The proposed scheme exploits the wideband channel property implied by the beam split effect,i.e.,beam split pattern,which can significantly improve the channel estimation accuracy.Simulation results show that the proposed scheme is able to achieve higher accuracy than existing schemes.

Millimeter Wave and THz Propagation Channel Modeling for High-Data Rate Railway Connectivity--Status and Open Challenges

In the new era of railways, infrastructure, trains and travelers will be interconnected. In order to realize a seamless high-data rate wireless connectivity, up to dozens of GHz bandwidth is required. This motivates the exploration of the underutilized millimeter wave （mmWave） as well as the largely unexplored THz band. In this paper, we first identify relevant communication scenarios for railway applications. Then the specific challenges and estimates of the bandwidth requirements for high-data rate railway connec-tivity in these communication scenarios are described. Finally, we outline the major challenges on propagation channel modeling and provide a technical route for further studies.

Terahertz Direct Modulation Techniques for High-speed Communication Systems

Terahertz communication technology can provide abundant frequency resources,strong confidentiality,antijamming capability,communication tracking capability and the ability to achieve highspeed data transmissions and can serve as an important technical method for high-speed communications in the future.Among these terahertz communication technologies,terahertz direct modulation technology is a key means to achieve low system complexity and power consumption.In this paper,a review and outlook of terahertz direct modulation technology are proposed from the aspects of high-electron-mobilitytransistor-based terahertz direct modulation,parallelswitch terahertz direct modulation,diode-based terahertz direct modulation,quantum cascade laser-based terahertz direct modulation and new-material-based terahertz direct modulation.We hope through this paper that more readers can gain knowledge about the development and challenges of terahertz direct modulation technology for high-speed communication systems,thus promoting the development of high-speed terahertz communication technology based on direct modulation.

A Survey on Terahertz Communications

With the exponential growth of the data traffic in wireless communication systems, terahertz(THz) frequency band is envisioned as a promising candidate to support ultra-broadband for future beyond fifth generation(5G), bridging the gap between millimeter wave(mmWave) and optical frequency ranges. The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive literature review on the development towards THz communications and presents some key technologies faced in THz wireless communication systems. Firstly, despite the substantial hardware problems that have to be developed in terms of the THz solid state superheterodyne receiver, high speed THz modulators and THz antennas, the practical THz channel model and the efficient THz beamforming are also described to compensate for the severe path attenuation. Moreover, two different kinds of lab-level THz communication systems are introduced minutely, named a solid state THz communication system and a spatial direct modulation THz communication system, respectively. The solid state THz system converts intermediate frequency(IF) modulated signal to THz frequency while the direct modulation THz system allows the high power THz sources to input for approving the relatively long distance communications. Finally, we discuss several potential application scenarios as well as some vital technical challenges that will be encountered in the future THz communications.

Towards Intelligent Reflecting Surface Empowered 6G Terahertz Communications: A Survey

Terahertz(THz)communications have been widely envisioned as a promising enabler to provide adequate bandwidth and achieve ultra-high data rates for sixth generation(6G)wireless networks.In order to mitigate blockage vulnerability caused by serious propagation attenuation and poor diffraction of THz waves,an intelligent reflecting surface(IRS),which manipulates the propagation of incident electromagnetic waves in a programmable manner by adjusting the phase shifts of passive reflecting elements,is proposed to create smart radio environments,improve spectrum efficiency and enhance coverage capability.Firstly,some prospective application scenarios driven by the IRS empowered THz communications are introduced,including wireless mobile communications,secure communications,unmanned aerial vehicle(UAV)scenario,mobile edge computing(MEC)scenario and THz localization scenario.Then,we discuss the enabling technologies employed by the IRS empowered THz system,involving hardware design,channel estimation,capacity optimization,beam control,resource allocation and robustness design.Moreover,the arising challenges and open problems encountered in the future IRS empowered THz communications are also highlighted.Concretely,these emerging problems possibly originate from channel modeling,new material exploration,experimental IRS testbeds and intensive deployment.Ultimately,the combination of THz communications and IRS is capable of accelerating the development of 6G wireless networks.

Towards 6G: Paradigm of Realistic Terahertz Channel Modeling

Terahertz(THz)communications are envisioned as a key technology for the sixth-generation wireless communication system(6G).However,it is not practical to perform large-scale channel measurements with high degrees of freedom at THz frequency band.This makes empirical or stochastic modeling approaches relying on measurements no longer stand.In order to break through the bottleneck of scarce fulldimensional channel sounding measurements,this paper presents a novel paradigm for THz channel modeling towards 6G.With the core of high-performance ray tracing(RT),the presented paradigm requires merely quite limited channel sounding to calibrate the geometry and material electromagnetic(EM)properties of the three-dimensional(3D)environment model in the target scenarios.Then,through extensive RT simulations,the parameters extracted from RT simulations can be fed into either ray-based novel stochastic channel models or cluster-based standard channel model families.Verified by RT simulations,these models can generate realistic channels that are valuable for the design and evaluation of THz systems.Representing two ends of 6G THz use cases from microscopy to macroscopy,case studies are made for close-proximity communications,wireless connections on a desktop,and smart rail mobility,respectively.Last but not least,new concerns on channel modeling resulting from distinguishing features of THz wave are discussed regarding propagation,antenna array,and device aspects,respectively.

Reliable and Energy-Aware Job Offloading at Terahertz Frequencies for Mobile Edge Computing

In this paper,we co-design the transmission power and the offloading strategy for job offloading to a mobile edge computing(MEC)server at Terahertz(THz)frequencies.The goal is to minimize the communication energy consumption while providing ultra-reliable low end-to-end latency(URLLC)services.To that end,we first establish a novel reliability framework,where the end-to-end(E2E)delay equals a weighted sum of the local computing delay,the communication delay and the edge computing delay,and the reliability is defined as the probability that the E2E delay remains below a certain pre-defined threshold.This reliability gives a full view of the statistics of the E2E delay,thus constituting advancement over prior works that have considered only average delays.Based on this framework,we establish the communication energy consumption minimization problem under URLLC constraints.This optimization problem is non-convex.To handle that issue,we first consider the special single-user case,where we derive the optimal solution by analyzing the structure of the optimization problem.Further,based on the analytical result for the single-user case,we decouple the optimization problem for multi-user scenarios into several sub-optimization problems and propose a sub-optimal algorithm to solve it.Numerical results verify the performance of the proposed algorithm.

Inverse design on terahertz multilevel diffractive lens based on 3D printing[Invited]

Terahertz(THz)lenses have numerous applications in imaging and communication systems.Currently,the common THz lenses are still based on the traditional design of a circular convex lens.In this work,we present a method for the design of a 3D-printed multilevel THz lens,taking advantage of the benefits offered by 3D printing technology,including compact size,lightweight construction,and cost-effectiveness.The approach utilizes an inverse design methodology,employing optimization methods to promise accurate performance.To reduce simulation time,we employ the finite-difference time-domain method in cylindrical coordinates for near-field computation and couple it with the Rayleigh-Sommerfeld diffraction theory to address far-field calculations.This technology holds great potential for various applications in the field of THz imaging,sensing,and communications,offering a novel approach to the design and development of functional devices operating in the THz frequency range.