IEEE International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications
31 August-3 September 2020 // Virtual Conference

W02: Workshop on Enabling Technologies for Terahertz Communications (ETTCOM)

Background

Terahertz (THz) technology, or what is more and more labelled by the scientific community as beyond 5G communication systems, has attracted a great interest from academia and industry. This is due to several interesting features of THz waves, including the tens and hundreds of gigahertz bandwidths available, and the fact that this frequency band poses only a minor health threat. Also, as millimetre-wave communication systems mature, the focus of research is, naturally, moving to the THz range. With the increase in bandwidth requirements, the D bands (110-170 GHz) and then the H bands (220-330 GHz) are being increasingly studied for future communication applications. Broad bandwidth of the THz frequency bands can be used for terabit-per-second (Tb/s) wireless indoor communication systems.

With the attractive feature of ultra-broadband, the exploitation of THz band for future wireless/optical communication has become a hot topic in last years. Although lots of research efforts have been undertaken with state-of-the-art devices and channel propagation, THz techniques are still not enough mature compared to microwave or photonics. As THz for wireless communication cannot be simply implemented with existing techniques, some key issues remain to be addressed before completing their deployment and commercialization. The first and most important is the availability of high-performance devices including powerful THz sources, high gain antennas and sensitive THz detectors, for overcoming the physical attenuations from free space link. The THz band gives access to a large amount of applications in very diverse domains, ranging from Terabit WPAN to Terabit/s file transferring, small backhaul cells, server farms, or virtual and augmented reality applications. Nevertheless, there are many challenges from the device, communication and networking perspectives, which require fundamentally new solutions.

Moreover, the application of integration techniques will play a role to reducing the energy consumption and cost while making the system more compact. Apart from hardware issues, the channel modelling of indoor and outdoor (LOS and NLOS propagation modes) THz wave propagation considering different types of environmental and RF constrains remains to be experimentally tested. Although THz technology could satisfy the demand for an ultra-high data rate, several technical challenges need to be overcome or better understood before its development and future deployment. The two main missions of this workshop are to expand the visibility of THz/Terabits communications and gather researchers from different research fields that can foster and develop this very fast-growing field. The workshop aims to attract researchers and academics from various fields of study, ranging from signal processing, THz materials and components, services to THz/Terabits communication and networking researchers. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

•Terahertz channel modelling and propagation,
•Terahertz modulations and wave transmitters,
•Terahertz wireless/optical detectors/receivers,
•Coding for terabit/s communications,
•System model with array antennas,
•Communication protocols for THz systems,
•Antenna design for terahertz systems,
•Terahertz wireless/optical communications and applications,
•Terahertz indoor communications,
•Photoconductive antennas and photomixers,
•Advances on experimental hardware design and implementation,
•Advanced discrete-time signal processing techniques,
•Plasmonic waveguides for terahertz and millimetre-waves,
•Micromachined circuits for terahertz applications,
•Filters design and ultra-low-resolution receivers,
•Terahertz based ultra-high bandwidth wireless access networks,
•Terahertz wireless instruments, devices and components.

Agenda

Invited Talk

“Reconfigurable Meta-Surfaces as an Enabler for THz Beamforming
Prof. Maziar Nekovee, School of Engineering and Informatics, University of Sussex, UK

Technical presentations

  • “Low-complexity Computational Units for the Local-SOVA Decoding Algorithm” by Stefan Weithoffer; Rami Klaimi; Charbel Abdel Nour; Norbert Wehn; and Catherine Douillard,
  •  “A 506 Gbit/s Polar Successive Cancellation List Decoder with CRC”, by Claus Kestel; Lucas Johannsen; Oliver Griebel; Jhon Jimenez; Timo Vogt; Timo Lehnigk-Emden; and Norbert Wehn,
  • “Outage Probability Analysis of THz Relaying Systems” by Alexandros-Apostolos A Boulogeorgos; and Angeliki Alexiou
  • “Dual-Polarized Generalized Spatial Modulation for Wireless Terabit System”, by Nizar Bouhlel; Majed Saad; Faouzi Bader; and Jacques Palicot
  • “Comparing MAC Protocols for Industrial IoT Using Terahertz Communications”, by Chiara Buratti; Leonardo Mesini; and Roberto Verdone
  •  “Simulated Propagation Properties for Future Outdoor sub-THz Networks”, by Mohammed Zahid Aslam; and Yoann Corre
  • “A Flexible Power Model for mm-Wave and THz High-Throughput Communication Systems”, by Claude Desset; Piet Wambacq; Yang Zhang; Mark Ingels; and Andre Bourdoux

Panel Discussion

THz Communications: Opportunities, Challenges, and Preliminary Developments

Terahertz (THz)-band communications are a key enabler for future-generation wireless communication systems that promise to integrate a wide range of data-demanding and delay-sensitive applications. Recent advancements in electronic, photonic, and plasmonic technologies are closing the gap in THz transceiver design. Consequently, prospect THz signal generation, modulation, and radiation methods are converging, and the corresponding channel model, noise, and hardware-impairment notions are emerging. These advancements pave the way to well-grounded research directions on THz-specific signal processing and communication techniques for wireless communications. In this context, this panel aims to go over the opportunities and challenges of communication systems operating in the THz band. It further motivates novel signal processing and communication techniques for MIMO-enabled THz sensing, as well as THz indoor localization.

Moderator

Prof. M. Slim Alouini
King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST)

Panel Members

Prof. Tetsuya Kawanishi (IEEE Fellow)
Prof. Waseda University, Japan

Prof. Angeliki Alexiou
University of Piraeus, Greece

Dr. Wolfgang Templ
Nokia Bell Labs, Germany

 

Invited Talks

“Wireless 2.0: Wireless Networks Empowered by Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces”
Dr. Marco Di Renzo, CNRS, Laboratoire L2S-CentraleSupélec. Paris-France

“BRAVE advances in Sub-THz wireless Communications”
Yoann Corre- SIRADEL, France.

Organizers:

  • Faouzi Bader, ISEP, France, faouzi.bader@isep.fr
  • Claude Desset, IMEC, Belgium, claude.desset@imec.be
  • Catherine Douillard, IMT-Atlantique, France, catherine.douillard@imt-atlantique.fr
  • Kostas Berberidis, University of Patras, Greece, berberid@ceid.upatras.gr
  • Yoann Core, Siradel, France, ycorre@siradel.com

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