- Notre Dame team develops a new terahertz antenna
- Terahertz is expected to be one of the frequencies used for 6G
- There's still a lot of development work that needs to happen to enable commercial deployment
A team from Notre Dame has designed a compact antenna that can handle terahertz (THz) communications, which will become more common in the forthcoming 6G era, while addressing some of the problems that the higher frequency signals will present.
Described in Nature Photonics, the multinational team led by Ranjan Singh used ideas from a branch of the study of light, called topological valley photonics, to create a topological leaky-wave antenna to further enable the delivery of THz signals at blistering data rates of one terabit per second.
The authors said that the work “heralds a new era in photonic integrated circuits featuring low-loss, compact designs with robust light transport through sharp corners.” Researchers first started curving THz signals around corners in 2024, extending the capabilities of the high-band signals.
The Notre Dame team developed a silicon chip drilled with a range of two different sized holes to enable controlled leakage of THz signals, which can allow the researchers to turn the chip into a “super-antenna,” according to the engineering school at Notre Dame.
“The idea behind this work grew out of a very practical question: how can we get terahertz signals off a chip and into open space in a simple, efficient way?” Ranjan Singh, professor of electrical engineering at the University of Notre Dame, told the university publication.
The terahertz players
DARPA, academics and operators like NTT DoCoMo have already started down the terahertz road. THz infrastructure is also expected to act as a sensing layer for 6G, determining movement, location and environmental changes using the THz signals that are already in the network.
Much like the short-range millimeter wave (28 GHz+) communications that became common with the the start of the 5G era. Terahertz communications will present its own set of challenges — they are line-of-sight and can’t penetrate fog and clouds and need to be curved around corners.
So even when THz infrastructure does become more common, it seems likely that the technology will to be used indoors in very controlled environments. Even at this pre-6G stage, however, telecom vendors are starting to move away from the terahertz dream somewhat, preferring to focus on mid-band 6G spectrum.