Terahertz Heterodyne Communication Using GaAs Field-Effect Transistor Receiver

Stéphane Blin (1, 2) , Philippe Nouvel (1, 2) , Annick Pénarier (1, 2) , Jeffrey Hesler

1 IES - Institut d’Electronique et des Systèmes
2 TéHO - Térahertz, hyperfréquence et optique

We report the first successful terahertz het- erodyne communication using a field-effect transistor for detection. The communication is a real-time transmission of an uncompressed high-definition TV signal at a data rate of 1.5 Gbps with a 307-GHz carrier frequency. The emitter is a frequency-multiplied amplifier chain whose last stage is a second harmonic mixer that multiplies the carrier signal by the data. The receiver only consists of a GaAs high-electron- mobility transistor that acts as a quadratic receiver, and two 20-dB-gain amplifiers, no limiting amplifier or forward error correction were used. A direct communication would be impossible with such a combination of modulation scheme at emission and quadratic detection at reception, while it is possible in a heterodyne configuration. In addition, for the same source power, the heterodyne scheme allows to increase the communication bandwidth from 80 MHz to more than 2 GHz for a local oscillator power of –8 dBm.

Mots clés: Terahertz radiation; communication systems; millimeter wave FETs

Domaines: Electronique

Stéphane Blin, Philippe Nouvel, Annick Pénarier, Jeffrey Hesler. Terahertz Heterodyne Communication Using GaAs Field-Effect Transistor Receiver. IEEE Electron Device Letters, 2017, 38 (1), pp.20-23. ⟨10.1109/LED.2016.2624782⟩. ⟨hal-01528404⟩