Record 240Gbit/s speed for 6G optical wireless link
Researchers from Osaka University and IMRA America have developed a single channel optical wireless link that runs up to 240Gbit/s.
The optical wireless link developed by Osaka uses stimulated Brillouin scattering laser to generate the signals at 300GHz for 6G networks and is aiming for multiplexed multichannel data rates up to 1Tbit/s.
The sub-terahertz band, which extends from 100 GHz to 300 GHz, will be used by 6G transmitters and receivers. A sophisticated approach called “multi-level signal modulation” is used to further increase the data transmission rate of these wireless links. However, when operating at the top end of these frequencies, multi-level signal modulation becomes highly sensitive to noise. To work well, it relies on precise reference signals, and when these signals begin to shift, the phase noise hits the performance of multi-level signal modulation.
“This problem has limited 300-GHz communications so far,” says Keisuke Maekawa, lead author of the study. “However, we found that at high frequencies, a signal generator based on a photonic device had much less phase noise than a conventional electrical signal generator.”
Specifically, the team used a stimulated Brillouin scattering laser, which employs interactions between sound and light waves, to generate a precise signal. They then set up a 300 GHz-band wireless communication system that employs the laser-based signal generator in both the transmitter and receiver. The system also used on-line digital signal processing (DSP) to demodulate the signals in the receiver and increase the data rate.
“Our team achieved a single-channel transmission rate of 240 gigabits per second,” says Tadao Nagatsuma, who leads the project. “This is the highest transmission rate obtained so far in the world using on-line DSP.”
The researchers anticipate that with multiplexing techniques (where more than one channel can be used) and more sensitive receivers, the data rate can be increased to 1 terabit per second.
“Single-channel 240-Gbit/s sub-THz wireless communications using ultra-low phase noise receiver,” was published in IEICE Electronics Express at doi.org/10.1587/elex.20.20230584
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