TERAhertz links using SOlid state devices and photoNICs – TERASONIC

The primary goal of TERASONIC project is the realization of a common French-German 100 Gbit/s 300 GHz wireless system over 1 km range.
The proposed architecture gathers the cutting edge of photonics technologies to achieve optical-to-THz conversion of optical modulated signals, using Unitravelling carrier photodiodes (UTC-PD) fabricated in France as optical-to-THz converters. This ultra-high data rate signal will be radiated and transmitted to produce a point to point (P2P) wireless data link. In order to achieve beyond state-of-the art performances, solid-state electronic receiver designed and fabricated in Germany will be integrated to down-convert the 300 GHz into baseband data.
TERASONIC proposes to merge photonics, THz and electronics skills to demonstrate a system-level demonstrator beyond actual state of art within the field of wireless huge data rate transmission systems.
Key features/guidelines for TERASONIC are:

- To combine Key enabling technologies, namely photonic and electronic to go beyond purely electronic or optical approaches in terms of bandwidth,
- to build an outdoor point-to-point Tx/Rx system, out-of-the-lab for operational demonstration, never realize in this frequency range and distance to the best of our knowledge.

Using the best of photonics combined with the best of electronic receivers (heterodyne scheme) will outperform classical P2P wireless links by several orders of magnitude in terms of data-rate. The overcoming of this challenge will lead to a greatly enhanced link budget in THz regime and also increases the spectral efficiency (bit/s per Hz bandwidth), making higher data rates and transmission distance a reality.
Last, as conventional wireless systems are bit-rate limited and now saturated in today’s frequency allocation plan, a breakthrough can be realized in the beginning of THz window, ie beyond 275 GHz and frequency allocation is not done yet for these new services and where huge bandwidth is available.