Design and Validation of a Metallic Reflectarray for Communications at True Terahertz Frequencies
Abstract
Wireless communications in the terahertz band (0.1-10 THz) is a promising and key wireless technology enabling ultra-high data rate communication over multi-gigahertz-wide bandwidths, thus fulfilling the demand for denser networks. The complex propagation environment at such high frequencies introduces several challenges, such as high spreading and molecular absorption losses. As such, intelligent reflecting surfaces have been proposed as a promising solution to enable communication in the presence of blockage or to aid a resource-limited quasi-omnidirectional transmitter direct its radiated power. In this paper, we present a metallic reflectarray design achieving controlled non-specular reflection at true terahertz frequencies (i.e., 1-1.05 THz). We conduct extensive experiments to further characterize and validate its working principle using terahertz time-domain spectroscopy and demonstrate its effectiveness with information-carrying signals using a continuous-wave terahertz testbed. Our results show that the reflectarray can help facilitate robust communication links over non-specular paths and improve the reliability of terahertz communications, thereby unleashing the true potential of the terahertz band.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2309.05813,
title = {Design and Validation of a Metallic Reflectarray for Communications at True Terahertz Frequencies},
author = {Sherif Badran and Arjun Singh and Arpit Jaiswal and Erik Einarsson and Josep M. Jornet},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2309.05813},
year = {2024}
}
Comments
Accepted and to be published in ACM mmNets 2023. Copyright {\copyright} 2023 by the Association for Computing Machinery, Inc. (ACM). Permission to make digital or hard copies of portions of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that the copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage