Press Release
The TERRANOVA consortium has demonstrated real-time THz wireless data transmission achieving net uplink data rates of 100 Gbit/s at 300 GHz radio frequency carrier. The demonstration was shown during the EUCNC 2019 conference held in Valencia, Spain from the 18th to the 21st of June 2019. The demo was enabled by a real-time modem and broadband THz frontends developed by Fraunhofer HHI and IAF, respectively. This showcase was one of the first THz wireless real-time links tested up to the application layer and served as an uplink connection for a next generation Passive Optical Network – Optical Line Termination system (NG-OLT) – of Altice Labs brand. Fed over the THz wireless link, the NG-OLT system was able to simultaneously employ GPON (ITU-T G.984) and XGS-PON (ITU-T G.9807) technologies to deliver live data to the customer side at multiples of the corresponding base bitrates of 2.5 Gbit/s and 10 Gbps, respectively. This demo reported the first application of a coherent digital signal processing (DSP) from fiber-optical communication to a THz wireless link. The DSP supports 2×2 MIMO transmission at a symbol rate of 32 GBd in a fully integrated modem solution, and allowed the investigation of key parameters, such as latency and packet loss probability for a THz wireless link in a real network environment.
As the next step, a real-time demonstration of a 100 Gb/s hybrid fiber-optical / THz-wireless communication link with joint end-to-end DSP correction will be showcased at the upcoming ECOC 2019 event to be held in Dublin, Ireland, from the 23rd to the 25th of September 2019.
Besides the fiber extender application use case, where this technology is a promising alternative to overcome physical and regulation constraints in the absence of optical fiber solutions, other relevant applications of the THz wireless technology are envisioned in the context of short range communication in residential and industrial environments, as well as in the 5G and beyond Fronthaul/Midhaul use cases.
TERRANOVA is a 30-month European Research Project funded by the European Commission program Horizon 2020. The project main objective is to study the radio transmission technology in the THz band and its interconnection with optical networks in “Beyond 5G” scenarios. The European consortium includes the following partners: University of Piraeus Research Center (Greece), Fraunhofer HHI and IAF (Germany), Intracom Telecom (Greece), University of Oulu (Finland), JCP-Connect (France), PICAdvanced (Portugal) and Altice Labs (Portugal).
