Samsung Electronics and University of California Santa Barbara Demonstrate 6G Terahertz Wireless Communication Prototype

 

The demonstration explored the potential of THz spectrum application for 6G wireless communications

https://news.samsung.com/global/samsung-electronics-and-university-of-california-santa-barbara-demonstrate-6g-terahertz-wireless-communication-prototype

Samsung Electronics today announced that the company demonstrated the 6G Terahertz (THz) wireless communication prototype in collaboration with the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB).

 

At the recent workshop on Terahertz communications at the IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC 2021), researchers from Samsung Research, Samsung Research America, and the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) introduced the potential impact that THz could have on next-generation 6G technology, demonstrating an end-to-end 140GHz wireless link using a fully digital beamforming solution.

 

“Samsung has been at the forefront of technological innovation and standardization of 5G and 6G. As we shared in our 6G vision white paper last year, we believe new spectrum opportunities at the THz spectrum will become a driving force of 6G technology. This demonstration can be a major milestone in exploring the feasibility of using the THz spectrum for 6G wireless communications,” said Senior Vice President Sunghyun Choi, an IEEE Fellow and Head of the Advanced Communication Research Center at Samsung Research.

 

The THz band in­cludes an enormous amount of available spectrum, which will enable wideband channels with tens of GHz-wide bandwidth. This could potentially provide a means to meet the 6G requirement of terabits per second data rate. The peak data rate can be 50 times faster than 5G and the over-the-air latency could potentially be reduced to one-tenth. These improvements will enable 6G hyper-connectivity services and ultimate multimedia experience, such as extended reali­ty (XR), high-fidelity mobile hologram, etc.

 16-channel 140GHz phased-array module (middle), dual-channel 140GHz RFICs (left), 128-element antenna array (right)

The end-to-end prototype system the researchers demonstrated consists of a 16-channel phased array transmitter and receiver modules, driven by CMOS (Complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor) RFICs (Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits), and a baseband unit to process signals with 2GHz bandwidth and fast adaptive beamforming. In the over-the-air test, the prototype system achieved real-time throughput of 6.2 Gbps over a 15-meter distance with adaptive beam steering capability at the Terahertz frequency.

 

Samsung and UCSB researchers have been working closely on the THz phased array module development, which is a key to the success of the test. The module requires sophisticated packaging technology to allow research test chips to be used in a large-scale array module. The precise digital beamforming calibration algorithm, developed by Samsung, enables these modules to achieve high beamforming gain.

Samsung researchers: Wonsuk Choi, Shadi Abu-Surra and Gary Xu with the THz proof-of-concept system

“Working together with UCSB, we have been able to overcome many technological challenges and develop this new THz proof-of-concept system to explore 6G use cases and deployment scenarios,” said Senior Vice President Charlie Zhang, an IEEE Fellow and Head of the Standards and Mobility Innovations Team at Samsung Research America. “Samsung and UCSB researchers will continue to push the technological boundaries to bring 6G and THz communication closer to reality.”

Professor Mark Rodwell, University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB)

UCSB’s group, led by the Electrical and Computer Engineering professor Mark Rodwell, first developed the 140GHz transmitter and receiver RFIC in 2017, as part of a program sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) in the U.S.

 

“We bring our knowledge of advanced mmWave technologies, in particular the THz spectrum above 100GHz, focusing on devices and integrated circuits, while Samsung provides its expertise in wireless systems and cellular networks,” said professor Mark Rodwell, an IEEE Fellow and winner of the IEEE Sarnoff Award and the IEEE Marconi Prize Paper Award.

 

Samsung released a white paper in July 2020 titled “The Next Hyper-Connected Experience for All” outlining the company’s 6G vision, which is to bring the next hyper-connected experience to every corner of life. To accelerate research for 6G, Samsung Research, the advanced R&D hub within Samsung Electronics’ end-product business, founded its Advanced Communications Research Center in May 2019.

Samsung research tackles 6G, says use of THz ‘inevitable’

                                                            

Samsung expects the ITU-R will begin work to define a 6G vision in 2021. (Pixabay)

https://www.fiercewireless.com/tech/samsung-research-tackles-6g-says-use-thz-inevitable
Monica Alleven

5G commercialization is still in the early stages, but it’s not too early to start thinking about what 6G will bring. It typically takes about 10 years from the start of research to commercialization of a new generation of wireless technology, notes Samsung, which released a new 6G white paper on Tuesday.

The company says its vision for 6G includes bringing the next hyper-connected experience to every corner of life. To speed research for 6G, Samsung Research founded its Advanced Communications Research Center in May of last year.

“We’ve already launched the research and development of 6G technologies by building upon the experience and ability we have accumulated from working on multiple generations of communications technology, including 5G,” said Sunghyun Choi, head of the Advanced Communications Research Center, in a press release. “Going forward, we are committed to leading the standardization of 6G in collaboration with various stakeholders across industry, academia and government fields.”

While the industry overall is just getting started in 5G, academics and others are studying what needs to happen in 6G. It was a keynote topic at last year’s Brooklyn 5G Summit, where Nokia Bell Labs President Marcus Weldon suggested that if people are skittish about using the phrase 6G, they can talk about it by framing it in terms of “Beyond 5G.”

RELATED: 6G too much? ‘Beyond 5G’ offers alternative

For 6G, Samsung expects the ITU-R will begin work to define a 6G vision in 2021. Taking into account the tendency for technical standards development to accelerate for each new generation, Samsung expects the 6G standard could be completed and commercialized as early as 2028, with mass commercialization occurring around 2030.

To realize advanced multimedia services such as truly immersive extended reality (XR), mobile holograms and digital replicas, 6G needs to provide a much higher data rate than 5G, which was designed to achieve 20 Gbps peak data rate. In 6G, they’re looking to provide the peak data rate of 1,000 Gbps.  

The white paper says that with the help of advanced sensors, artificial intelligence (AI) and communication technologies, it will be possible to replicate physical entities, including people, devices, objects and places in a virtual world. The digital replica of a physical entity is called a digital twin, and in a 6G environment, users will be able use digital twins to explore and monitor the reality in a virtual world, without temporal or spatial constraints.

Terahertz bands 'inevitable'

To satisfy the requirements for 6G, the industry may turn to the terahertz (THz) frequencies, new antenna technologies to enhance the coverage of high frequency band signals, advanced duplex technologies, spectrum sharing and AI.

The paper says it’s inspiring that in March 2019, the FCC opened the spectrum between 95 GHz and 3,000 GHz for experimental use and unlicensed applications to encourage the development of new technologies. Discussions on use cases and deployment scenarios for 5G new radio (NR) systems operating at bands beyond 52.6 GHz have begun, and following this trend, “it is inevitable” that mobile communications will use THz bands (i.e., 0.1-10 THz]) in future systems.

RELATED: NYU series tackles next spectrum frontier: terahertz

To cope with the difficult propagation characteristics of the THz bands, it may be natural to enhance the massive MIMO technology that was introduced to support millimeter wave (mmWave) bands in 5G. But the paper notes that since the THz band requires much more antennas than the mmWave band, there may be significantly more practical difficulties.

TeraView secures $10m investment from Samsung and partners

http://www.businessweekly.co.uk/news/hi-tech/teraview-secures-10m-investment-samsung-and-partners

Business Weekly understands that the investment is worth around $10 million and has been secured on the back of TeraView’s development of new products for the inspection of chip sets used in mobile consumer electronics.

The investment will support the expansion of product and technology development at TeraView as well as pre and post-sales customer support across the world, maintaining TeraView’s technological and commercial lead in the growing Terahertz market. The company says the value to consumers will be higher performance and more reliable mobile devices.

Working with its Fortune 500 customers, TeraView has identified substantial market opportunities for the use of Terahertz in the development and manufacture of advanced integrated circuits used in the mobile electronics industry.

Driven by the needs of the smartphone and tablet computing markets, TeraView is deploying its inspection products in collaboration with major semiconductor companies for fault detection and quality assurance of semiconductor chipsets.

TeraView will use the new investment to enhance the performance of its proprietary technology as well as to transition current products into QA and high throughput inspection solutions optimised for the requirements of customer production lines.

The funding also will allow the company to increase its post-sales support and infrastructure in Asia and the US to directly assist manufacturing customers.

The development of Terahertz for high value coatings inspection in the automotive, pharmaceutical and other industries is also accelerated by the investment, as is exploration of new applications and market opportunities.

Due to the strategic importance of TeraView’s technology in integrated circuit development and production activities, the investment was sponsored by Samsung Ventures, in collaboration with financial investors who also provided follow-on and new capital.

Major Asian and US semiconductor manufacturers have been working successfully with TeraView to demonstrate the applications of TeraView’s products in a variety of development and industrial processes.

New investors include Nordson DAGE (Nordson, Nasdaq:NDSN), the leading provider of X Ray inspection systems to the semiconductor industry. Nordson views Terahertz as an important tool to address customer needs for fault detection and inspection of advanced integrated circuits, and as complementary to its own innovative X Ray products.

London-based Q Street Capital and the Low Carbon Innovation Fund, administered by Turquoise International, also participated in the funding round.

Dr Don Arnone (pictured), TeraView’s CEO,  said: “This investment was made in direct response to the progress which the company has made in supplying customers with solutions to their needs in the development and manufacture of high value products. We can now continue to embed TeraView technology in customer manufacturing lines, as well as build up additional customer support infrastructure in the Far East and US, both of which are necessary for future growth.

“The funding also allows TeraView to maintain its competitive lead in the growing Terahertz market. This all comes at a critical and exciting time when applications of Terahertz light are being validated and rapidly expanded, both of which have been driven and dominated by TeraView’s work with the technology and our global customer base.”

Samsung Electronics-Patent Issued for Terahertz Interaction Structure Including a Folded Waveguide with a Ridge Structure and Having an Electron Beam Tunnel Passing through the Ridge Structure

By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Journal of Engineering -- FromAlexandria, Virginia, VerticalNews journalists report that a patent by the inventors Baik, Chan-wook (Yongin-si, KR); Ahn, Ho-young (Yongin-si, KR), filed on March 28, 2011, was published online on May 26, 2015.

http://www.4-traders.com/SAMSUNG-ELECTRONICS-CO-LT-6494906/news/Samsung-Electronics--Patent-Issued-for-Terahertz-Interaction-Structure-Including-a-Folded-Waveguide-20484753/

The patent's assignee for patent number 9041289 is SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO., LTD. (Suwon-si, KR).

News editors obtained the following quote from the background information supplied by the inventors: "Apparatuses and methods consistent with the present description relate to electromagnetic wave circuits, and more particularly, to electromagnetic wave circuits having a ridge structure.

"The terahertz frequency band between a megahertz frequency band and an optical frequency band is a frequency band used in fields such as molecular optics, biophysics, medicine, spectroscopy, imaging, and security. However, in the related art, a terahertz oscillator or a terahertz amplifier for generating terahertz waves has not been developed due to physical and technological limitations. Recently, a terahertz oscillator or amplifier has been developed due to various theories and the development of fine-machining technology.

"In terahertz oscillators or amplifiers, interaction circuits are employed for oscillating or amplifying interaction between an electron beam and electromagnetic waves. The interaction circuit may be used in various fields provided that the energy of the electron beam is effectively converted into an electromagnetic wave and a range of an operating frequency is wide."

As a supplement to the background information on this patent, VerticalNews correspondents also obtained the inventors' summary information for this patent: "According to an aspect of an exemplary embodiment, there is provided a terahertz interaction circuit including a waveguide having a folded shape and in which an electromagnetic wave propagates; and an electron beam tunnel which is formed to penetrate through the waveguide and through which an electron beam passes, wherein the waveguide comprises a ridge portion in which at least a portion of a surface of the waveguide protrudes into the waveguide.

"A thickness of a portion of the waveguide at the ridge portion may be thinner than a thickness of a portion of the waveguide at either side of the ridge portion.

"The waveguide may have a periodically folded shape, and the electron beam tunnel may penetrate through the ridge portion of the waveguide.

"The ridge portion may be formed by protruding a center portion of a surface of the waveguide into the waveguide.

"The waveguide may have an I-shaped cross-section or a dumbbell cross-section.

"The waveguide may include at least one of a first ridge portion that is formed by protruding an upper center surface of the waveguide into the waveguide, and a second ridge portion that is formed by protruding a lower center surface of the waveguide into the waveguide.

"The ridge portion may have a rectangular cross-section or a semi-circular cross-section. The electron beam tunnel may have a square cross-section or a circular cross-section.

"Inner surfaces of the waveguide and the electron beam tunnel may be coated with a metal material.

"According to another aspect of an exemplary embodiment, there is provided a method of fabricating a terahertz interaction circuit, the method including preparing a first substrate; preparing a second substrate, on which a part of a waveguide that has a folded shape and comprises a ridge portion and a part of an electron beam tunnel penetrating through the waveguide are formed, for layering on the first substrate; preparing a third substrate, on which the other part of the waveguide and the other part of the electron beam tunnel are formed, for layering on the second substrate; preparing a fourth substrate for layering on the third substrate; and bonding the first through fourth substrates to each other.

"The electron beam tunnel may be formed to penetrate through the ridge portion of the waveguide.

"The portion of the waveguide on the sides of the ridge portion may be extended into bonding surfaces of the first and fourth substrates.

"Bonding surfaces of the first through fourth substrates and inner surfaces of the waveguide and the electron beam tunnel may be coated with a metal layer.

"The first through fourth substrates may include silicon."

For additional information on this patent, see: Baik, Chan-wook; Ahn, Ho-young. Terahertz Interaction Structure Including a Folded Waveguide with a Ridge Structure and Having an Electron Beam Tunnel Passing through the Ridge Structure. U.S. Patent Number 9041289, filed March 28, 2011, and published online on May 26, 2015. 

Samsung Electronics : Patent Issued for Terahertz Interaction Circuit with Open Cavity Portion

By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Electronics Newsweekly 

-- From Alexandria, Virginia, VerticalNews journalists report that a patent by the inventors Baik, Chan-wook (Yongin-si, KR); Ahn, Ho-young (Suwon-si, KR), filed on February 21, 2012, was published online on July 1, 2014.

http://www.4-traders.com/SAMSUNG-ELECTRONICS-CO-LT-6494906/news/Samsung-Electronics--Patent-Issued-for-Terahertz-Interaction-Circuit-with-Open-Cavity-Portion-18706730/

The patent's assignee for patent number 8768115 is Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (Suwon-si, KR).

News editors obtained the following quote from the background information supplied by the inventors: "The present disclosure relates to a terahertz interaction circuit, and more particularly, to a terahertz interaction circuit having a narrow open cavity structure.

"A terahertz frequency range between a microwave frequency range and an optical frequency range is used in the fields of molecular optics, biophysics, medical science, spectroscopy, or imaging or security. However, there have been few developments in the field of terahertz oscillators or amplifiers for generating terahertz waves due to physical and engineering limitations. Recently, as various new theories and fine processing technologies are introduced, the terahertz oscillators or amplifiers are being developed.

"In particular, there has been proposed an interaction circuit for oscillating terahertz waves through the interaction between an electronic beam and an electromagnetic wave in a terahertz oscillator using a vacuum electronic technology. In such an interaction circuit, electric field magnitude and interaction impedance are characteristic factors. As the strength of an electric field magnitude increases, the efficiency of converting the energy of an electronic beam into electromagnetic wave energy is improved. Interaction impedance is a factor in output efficiency and is proportional to the square of the electric field magnitude.

"Thus, the electric field magnitude affects the interaction impedance."

As a supplement to the background information on this patent, VerticalNews correspondents also obtained the inventors' summary information for this patent: "One of more embodiments provide a terahertz interaction circuit having a narrow open cavity structure.

"According to an aspect of an embodiment, there is provided a terahertz interaction circuit that includes a waveguide through which electromagnetic waves pass, the waveguide having a folded shape and including a narrow open cavity portion; and an electron beam tunnel through which an electron beam passes, the electron beam tunnel penetrating through the waveguide.

"The electron beam tunnel may penetrate through the open cavity portion of the waveguide.

"The waveguide may be folded cyclically, each cycle of the waveguide may comprise an open cavity portion, and the electron beam tunnel may penetrate through the open cavity portion of each cycle of the waveguide.

"The waveguide may include a first tapered portion connected to one side of the open cavity portion and a second tapered portion connected to the other side of the open cavity portion, each of the first tapered portion and the second tapered portion having a cross section that gradually decreases toward the open cavity portion.

"The waveguide may have a rectangular cross section.

"The open cavity portion may have a shape that is narrowed along a direction in which the electron beam proceeds as compared to the remaining portions of the waveguide.

"The waveguide may have a circular cross section.

"The electron beam tunnel may have a rectangular or circular cross section.

"Electromagnetic waves of a millimeter wavelength range, a sub-millimeter wavelength range, or a terahertz frequency range may proceed through the waveguide.

"The waveguide and the electron beam tunnel may be formed in a block.

"The block may be formed of a metal material.

"The block may be formed of a non-metal material and inner wall surfaces of the waveguide and the electron beam tunnel are coated with metal."

For additional information on this patent, see: Baik, Chan-wook; Ahn, Ho-young. Terahertz Interaction Circuit with Open Cavity Portion. U.S. Patent Number 8768115, filed February 21, 2012, and published online on July 1, 2014. Patent URL: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=8768115.PN.&OS=PN/8768115RS=PN/8768115

Samsung Researchers Celebrate Promising Graphene Breakthrough

A new manufacturing technique could accelerate use of the world's strongest material in computers and other products.

http://www.informationweek.com/mobile/mobile-devices/samsung-researchers-celebrate-promising-graphene-breakthrough/d/d-id/1174140

Flexible displays, terahertz chips, and vastly improved electronics just got closer to emerging from laboratories and reaching the market, thanks to the work of the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT) and Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul, South Korea.

Samsung Electronics announced Friday that its researchers have found a way to accelerate the commercialization of graphene, a material endowed with exceptional conductivity, strength, flexibility, lightness, and transparency.

Discovered in 2004 by professors Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov at the University of Manchester -- a feat that earned them the 2010 Nobel Prize for Physics -- graphene is seen as a wonder material that can revolutionize products and industrial processes across multiple industries.

Graphene is the strongest material in the world; it's stronger than diamond and about 300 times stronger than steel. Yet it's flexible. It's also the thinnest material in the world; it can be made in sheets one atom thick, which also makes it transparent. It's the best electrical conductor known.

The reason graphene isn't everywhere is that it's difficult to manufacture. That's why researchers around the globe are trying to simplify the process. It's a matter of scientific and national interest. Those companies capable of integrating graphene into industrial processes are likely to play a major role in the 21st-century equivalent of the semiconductor revolution that played out in the second half of the 20th century.

Last year, the University of Manchester began building a $100 million National Graphene Institute to commercialize the substance. But research groups in China, South Korea, and the US, among other countries, also have recognized the commercial potential of graphene and are racing to find ways to manufacture the material at scale and to make it commercially useful.

(Source: Wikipedia)

Graphene's presence in consumer goods is limited at the moment to tennis rackets made by Head. But it is likely to be used in future mobile phone touchscreens (particularly flexible ones) and for powerful, energy-efficient computer processors. In November, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation awarded a $100,000 grant to the National Graphene Institute to develop agraphene-based condom, which could advance the foundation's public health goals.

SAIT found a way to grow uniform single-crystal monolayer graphene on a silicon wafer, a necessary step to use graphene on chips instead of traditional semiconductors. Previous efforts focused on multi-crystal synthesis -- adding small graphene particles to cover a large area -- but that process degraded the advantageous properties of the material.

In a press release, Samsung Electronics called its researchers' work "one of the most significant breakthroughs in graphene research in history."
(Thomas Claburn has been writing about business and technology since 1996, for publications such as New Architect, PC Computing, InformationWeek, Salon, Wired, and Ziff Davis Smart Business. Before that, he worked in film and television, having earned a not particularly useful ... View Full Bio)

Millimeter Waves May Be the Future of 5G Phones

Samsung’s millimeter-wave transceiver technology could enable ultrafast mobile broadband by 2020

By Ariel Bleicher / July 2013 

Beyond 4G: Samsung engineers [from left] Wongsuk Choi, Daeryong Lee, and Byunghwan Lee test next-generation cellular equipment at a lab in Suwon, South Korea.

http://m.spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/wireless/millimeter-waves-may-be-the-future-of-5g-phones

Clothes, cars, trains, tractors, body sensors, and tracking tags. By the end of this decade, analysts say, 50 billion things such as these will connect to mobile networks. They’ll consume 1000 times as much data as today’s mobile gadgets, at rates 10 to 100 times as fast as existing networks can support. So as carriers rush to roll out 4G equipment, engineers are already beginning to define a fifth generation of wireless standards.
What will these “5G” technologies look like? It’s too early to know for sure, but engineers at Samsung and at New York University say they’re onto a promising solution. The South Korea–based electronics giant generated some buzz when it announced a new 5G beam-forming antenna that could send and receive mobile data faster than 1 gigabit per second over distances as great as 2 kilometers. Although the 5G label is premature, the technology could help pave the road to more-advanced mobile applications and faster data transfers.
Samsung’s technology is appealing because it’s designed to operate at or near “millimeter-wave” frequencies (3 to 300 gigahertz). Cellular networks have always occupied bands lower on the spectrum, where carrier waves tens of centimeters long (hundreds of megahertz) pass easily around obstacles and through the air. But this coveted spectrum is heavily used, making it difficult for operators to acquire more of it. Meanwhile, 4G networks have just about reached the theoretical limit on how many bits they can squeeze into a given amount of spectrum.
So some engineers have begun looking toward higher frequencies, where radio use is lighter. Engineers at Samsung estimate that government regulators could free as much as 100 GHz of millimeter-wave spectrum for mobile communications—about 200 times what mobile networks use today. This glut of spectrum would allow for larger bandwidth channels and greater data speeds.
Wireless products that use millimeter waves already exist for fixed, line-of-sight transmissions. And a new indoor wireless standard known as WiGig will soon allow multigigabit data transfers between devices in the same room. But there are reasons engineers have long avoided millimeter waves for broader mobile coverage.

Illustration: Erik Vrielink

5g Beam Scheme: Steerable millimeter-wave beams could enable multigigabit mobile connections. Phones at the edge of a 4G cell [blue] could use the beams to route signals around obstacles. Because the beams wouldn’t overlap, phones could use the same frequencies [pink] without interference. Phones near the 4G tower could connect directly to it [green].

For one thing, these waves don’t penetrate solid materials very well. They also tend to lose more energy than do lower frequencies over long distances, because they are readily absorbed or scattered by gases, rain, and foliage. And because a single millimeter-wave antenna has a small aperture, it needs more power to send and receive data than is practical for cellular systems.
Samsung’s engineers say their technology can overcome these challenges by using an array of multiple antennas to concentrate radio energy in a narrow, directional beam, thereby increasing gain without upping transmission power. Such beam-forming arrays, long used for radar and space communications, are now being used in more diverse ways. The Intellectual Ventures spin-off Kymeta, for instance, is developing metamaterials-based arrays in an effort to bring high-speed satellite broadband to remote or mobile locations such as airplanes.
Samsung’s current prototype is a matchbook-size array of 64 antenna elements connected to custom-built signal-processing components. By dynamically varying the signal phase at each antenna, this transceiver generates a beam just 10 degrees wide that it can switch rapidly in any direction, as if it were a hyperactive searchlight. To connect with one another, a base station and mobile radio would continually sweep their beams to search for the strongest connection, getting around obstructions by taking advantage of reflections.
“The transmitter and receiver work together to find the best beam path,” says Farooq Khan, who heads Samsung’s R&D center in Dallas. Khan and his colleagues Zhouyue Pi and Jianzhong Zhang filed the first patent describing a millimeter-wave mobile broadband system in 2010. Although the prototype revealed this year is designed to work at 28 GHz, the Samsung engineers say their approach could be applied to most frequencies between about 3 and 300 GHz. “Our technology is not limited to 28 GHz,” Pi says. “In the end, where it can be deployed depends on spectrum availability.”
In outdoor experiments near Samsung’s Advanced Communications Lab, in Suwon, South Korea, a prototype transmitter was able to send data at more than 1 Gb/s to two receivers moving up to 8 kilometers per hour—about the speed of a fast jog. Using transmission power “no higher than currently used in 4G base stations,” the devices were able to connect up to 2 km away when in sight of one another, says Wonil Roh, who heads the Suwon lab. For non-line-of-sight connections, the range shrank to about 200 to 300 meters.
Theodore Rappaport, a wireless expert at the Polytechnic Institute of NYU, has achieved similar results for crowded urban spaces in New York City and Austin, Texas. His NYU Wireless lab, which has received funding from Samsung, is working to characterize the physical properties of millimeterwave channels. In recent experiments, he and his students simulated beam-forming arrays using megaphone-like “horn” antennas to steer signals. After measuring path losses between two horn transceivers placed in various configurations, they concluded that a base station operating at 28 or 38 GHz could provide consistent signal coverage up to about 200 meters.
Millimeter-wave transceivers may not make useful replacements for current cellular base stations, which cover up to about a kilometer. But in the future, many base stations will likely be much smaller than today’s, Rappaport points out. Already carriers are deploying compact base stations, known as small cells, in congested urban areas to expand data capacity. Not only could millimeter-wave technology add to that capacity, he says, it could also provide a simple, inexpensive alternative to backhaul cables, which link mobile base stations to operators’ core networks.
“The beauty of millimeter waves is there’s so much spectrum, we can now contemplate systems that use spectrum not only to connect base stations to mobile devices but also to link base stations to other base stations or back to the switch,” Rappaport says. “We can imagine a whole new cellular architecture.”
Other wireless experts remain skeptical that millimeter waves can be widely used for mobile broadband. “This is still theoretical; it has to be proven,” says Afif Osseiran, a master researcher at Ericsson and project coordinator for the Mobile and wireless communication Enablers for the Twenty-twenty Information Society (METIS). The newly formed consortium of European companies and universities is working to identify the most promising 5G solutions by early 2015.
Osseiran says METIS is considering a variety of technologies, including new data coding and modulation techniques, better interference management, densely layered small cells, multihop networks, and advanced receiver designs. He emphasizes that a key characteristic of 5G networks will be the use of many diverse systems that must work together. “Millimeter-wave technology is only one part of a bigger pie,” he says.
This article originally appeared in print as “The 5G Phone Future.”

Samsung funds graphene antenna project for wireless, ultra-fast intra-chip links

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/149172-samsung-funds-graphene-antenna-project-for-wireless-ultra-fast-intra-chip-links

• By John Hewitt

At MWC 2013 in Barcelona, Samsung has announced that it will be funding new research into graphene-based antennae for intra-chip communication in the terahertz band. As part of their Global Outreach Program, Samsung will be giving $120,000 to a multidisciplinary team comprised of researchers from the  and the Georgia Institute of Technology. The primary focus of the grant is to develop the coding and modulation schemes necessary for wireless, internal communication at hundreds of gigabytes per second among the thousands of sub-processors of a multi-core chip — an impossible feat with current technology.

Multicore processors can have a large number of subunits that share and execute tasks in parallel. Wireless communication is the next logical step in processor optimization which would relax many of the constraints imposed by traditional planar topologies wired on 2D surfaces. While the terahertz band has been extensively studied for imaging (See: How terahertz laser scanners will spy on you in airports) and communications on scales of meters, reducing things to the nanometer regime presents new challenges. Terahertz radiation (0.1 to 10THz) can be approached from the radio-frequency or the optical perspective, depending on whether you look at it as high frequency waves, or low energy photons. Classical antenna theory predicts that the frequency to efficiently operate a nanoscale antenna would be prohibitively high. However the reduced speed of electrons in graphene suggests that an atomically defined antenna would have a resonant frequency at much more practical values.

Sparked by the 2004 Nobel Prize for the isolation of pure samples of graphene, a breakneck roadmap has been laid out for graphene-based devices. Competing research onplasmonic graphene antennas are ongoing at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and elsewhere. One buzzword that has already emerged in this new field is graphene-enabled wireless network-on-a-chip (GWNoC). There is still much clarification of terms to be made when talking about on-chip (intra) and between-chip (inter) communications. For the most part, nanometer-scale graphene antennae, or graphennae as we like to call them here in the ExtremeTech bunker, will be restricted to operation below a distance of about one centimeter, which might be considered huge by today’s smartphone standards. (See: IBM creates first cheap, commercially viable, electronic-photonic integrated chip for on-chip laser communications.)

Both research groups have ongoing efforts in other graphene-related technologies. Theoriginal grant proposal describes their ambitions to revolutionize the ways processors and memory interact from a multicore perspective, for instance, in terms of data/cache coherence, consistency, and synchronization. They mention that among other technologies, it has recently been shown the emission of photons from nano-structures due to electron-phonon interaction has motivated the study of nanotubes and ribbons as optical emitters or detectors, potentially also in the terahertz range.

With the mention now of phonons we have entered into more esoteric physics — the elemental way in which quanta of heat move through solids as waves or vibrations. Even at the larger scale, however, the value of these types of communications have their place as ants conducting signals more efficiently by drumming on branches rather than emitting into the air, or elephants thumping the ground with seismic infrasound. On board a chip, we are just beginning to imagine the full potential of this technology.