The talk will give a general overview of THz com systems already reported, based on photonic or electronic devices. Even if THz links are by essence more robust to dusts and fig than IR optics, THz link budgets may first induce only real point to point applications over km range, using active signal tracking and possibly channel effects compensations. THz radio will also rely in the future on key advanced technologies, using cutting edge active devices, electronic or photonics-based. First THz applications may concern back-hauls for next 5 or 6G cell networks, or direct optical to radio-THz bridges. On the later, the huge development of fibre-optic networks, especially on coherent networks let think that optical-to-THz transceivers could play a major role in that systems. Some results of multi 10 Gbit/s links realized using QPSK channelling and photonic devices will be presented.
Communications
The communication presentations (keynote talks, facilitated break-out sessions, posters) will be continuously in May and June.
Guillaume Ducournau obtained in 2002 the Diplome d’ingénieur from ESIGELEC, Rouen, France, in electrical engineering. In 2002, he worked in Canada on optical fiber Bragg gratings. In 2005, he obtained the PhD degree from Université de Rouen on fiber optic DPSK based systems for long-haul optical communications. Since 2007, he is an Assistant Professor at the University of Lille in the THz photonics group of IEMN.
Dr. Ducournau is mainly involved in the research of optoelectronic THz photomixers, for wireless communication applications, THz instrumentation and imaging. He has 10 years of experience in the domain of optical fibers technology and THz instrumentation. In order to carry out his research, he developed several experimental set up dedicated to the characterization of optoelectronics and THz devices. He is author or co-author of more than 80 publications in peer-reviewed international journals or peer reviewed conferences proceedings. He has worked on several ANR (French/Japan “WITH” ICT Project) and European projects (ITN “MITEPHO” and STREP “ROOTHz”).
Guillaume Ducournau is actually investigating the THz communications field and is actually coordinating the French ANR program “COM’TONIQ” (2014-2017) dedicated to the development of THz wireless communications in the 220-320 GHz window.
Keynote talk
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
 CHIST-ERA Conference 2015 - Ducournau.pdf | 1.12 MB |
Jordi Romeu was born in Barcelona, Spain. He received the Ingeniero de Telecomunicación and Doctor Ingeniero de Telecomunicación, both from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) in 1986 and 1991, respectively. In 1985, he joined the Antennalab at the Signal Theory and Communications Department, UPC. Currently he is Full Professor there, where he is engaged in research in antenna near-field measurements, antenna diagnostics, and antenna design for communications and remote sensing. He was visiting scholar at the Antenna Laboratory, University of California, Los Angeles, in 1999, on a NATO Scientific Program Scholarship, and in 2004 at University of California Irvine. He holds several patents and has published 60 refereed papers in international jounals and 80 conference proceedings. Dr. Romeu was Grand Winner of the European IT Prize, awarded by the European Comission, for his contributions in the development of fractal antennas in 1998. He is IEEE Fellow.
The use of the terahertz band for wireless communications is impaired by some physical limitations. The vision of any application based service must consider these limitations. The high expectations of “tera bit per second” data throughput are shadowed by the limited range imposed by the huge atmospheric attenuation. Nevertheless this limited range can be turned into an opportunity for secure communications, and where very short range high data throughput communications are required. Potential expansion of terahertz wireless communications is hindered by the shortcomings of present technologies, amongst them the inexistence of efficient sources and detectors. Some graphene based devices may overcome these difficulties. Finally there are plenty of issues related to coding, medium access, synchronization that must be considered.
Keynote talk
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| CHIST-ERA Conference 2015 - Romeu.pdf | 4.68 MB |
Dr. Martyn Fice studied Natural Sciences and Electrical Sciences at Robinson College, Cambridge University, receiving the BA degree in 1984. His PhD degree was awarded in 1989, for research into the application of electron-beam lithography to the fabrication of Bragg gratings for 1550 nm DFB semiconductor lasers, work carried out at the Microelectronics Research Centre, part of Cambridge University’s Cavendish Laboratory. In 1989, Dr. Fice joined STC Technology Laboratories, Harlow, U.K. (later acquired by Nortel), working for several years on the design and development of InP-based semiconductor lasers for undersea optical systems and other applications. Subsequent work at Nortel involved research into various aspects of optical communications systems and networks, including wavelength division multiplexing, all-optical wavelength conversion, optical regeneration, and optical packet switching.
The current research interests of Martyn Fice include optical transmission systems, coherent optical detection, optical phase lock loop techniques, and millimetre and THz wave generation and detection.
Global IP traffic from wireless and mobile devices is growing exponentially, due to both increased numbers of networked devices and the use of higher-bandwidth applications such as video streaming. It is predicted that huge increases in wireless data rate (perhaps by a factor of 1000) will be required in the next 10 to 20 years. The bandwidth available for current mobile data networks (3G and 4G) and WLAN (Wi-Fi) will not support the expected increased data rates, and new bands in the mm-wave region of the spectrum are already being proposed for 5G networks. Vast bandwidth is available at sub-THz frequencies (>200 GHz), potentially addressing the large data rates that may be required in future generations of mobile networks or for very short range WLANs or machine-to-machine networks.
The combination of greatly increased wireless path loss at sub-THz carrier frequencies, increased data rate, and low source power implies that wireless link lengths will be much shorter than we are used to. Highly directional links will be required and improvements in key components will help, but these are unlikely to be sufficient on their own. New network architectures will also be needed, with wireline connections delivering high-speed data to a plethora of wireless antenna units serving much smaller cells than are used today. Fibre distribution networks and photonic THz generation could leverage the coherent detection and digital signal processing techniques used in the latest generation of optical fibre transmission systems, providing last-hop mobility for the user and a truly converged fibre-wireless network. As this scenario pushes photonics closer to the end user, achieving low cost will be essential. This issue can be addressed by the development of application-specific THz-photonic integrated circuits.
In this presentation, I will review current work on photonics-enabled sub-THz wireless communications, discuss how some of the issues mentioned above can be addressed, and speculate on the timescale for their implementation.
Keynote talk
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| CHIST-ERA Conference 2015 - Fice.pdf | 4.1 MB |
