Minimalist terahertz wireless transceiver in integrated photonics.

Area of Science:

• Integrated photonics
• Wireless communication
• Terahertz technology

Background:

• Photonics-assisted wireless communication offers high bandwidth but faces challenges in power-sensitive end devices due to complex transceiver architectures.
• Mitigating carrier drift and jitter typically requires high-purity sources or extensive digital signal processing (DSP).

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose a minimalist integrated photonics-assisted terahertz wireless transceiver for lightweight systems.
• To overcome the hardware complexity and DSP overhead hindering the adoption of such technologies in end devices.

Main Methods:

• Utilized residual carrier modulation and injection locking for a streamlined transceiver architecture.
• Employed off-the-shelf 4 MHz linewidth distributed feedback laser chips and a single photodetector receiver.
• Integrated on-chip modulator and photodiode for enhanced system integration.

Main Results:

• Achieved 144 Gbps high-speed data transmission at sub-terahertz frequencies.
• Operated the transceiver in a digital signal processing (DSP)-free regime for carrier recovery.
• Demonstrated a streamlined architecture eliminating the need for complex carrier recovery mechanisms.

Conclusions:

• The proposed minimalist transceiver design significantly reduces hardware complexity and DSP requirements.
• This scheme enables higher-level system integration and paves the way for lightweight, high-performance photonics-assisted wireless transceivers in end devices.
• Facilitates massive adoption of advanced wireless communication technologies for ubiquitous access.