3rd ACM International Conference on Nanoscale Computing and Communication
New York, USA, September 28-30, 2016
Holiday Inn L.I. City - Manhattan View
3rd ACM International Conference on Nanoscale Computing and Communication
New York, USA, September 28-30, 2016
Holiday Inn L.I. City - Manhattan View
Tutorials
Electromagnetic Communications in the Terahertz Band
Metamaterials and Metasurfaces in Arbitrary Control of Electromagnetic Waves and Their Applications in THz Communication Components and Systems
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Hou-Tong Chen
Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies |
The control of electromagnetic waves lies at the core of many modern technologies. Naturally occurring materials provide only limited electromagnetic response, insufficient for emerging technologies with increasingly demanding requirements. Metamaterials and metasurfaces are a new class of effective media that gain their electromagnetic properties from the composite metallic and dielectric subwavelength structures. During the past decades metamaterials have demonstrated many exotic phenomena that are otherwise difficult or impossible to realize, such as negative index of refraction and electromagnetic invisibility. Due to the complex fabrication, strong dispersion and high losses, three dimensional bulk metamaterials have encountered difficulties in practical applications. In contrast, the two-dimensional equivalent of metamaterials, or metasurfaces, consisting of single-layer or few-layer stacks of planar structures, can be readily fabricated using currently available fabrication methods. The ultrathin thickness in the wave propagation direction can greatly suppress the undesirable losses, and the dispersion can be tailored to gain many desirable functionalities. In this tutorial I will present the recent advances in metamaterials, particularly metasurfaces, for arbitrary control of the amplitude, phase, and polarization state of electromagnetic waves. These include antireflection, perfect absorption, polarization conversion, wavefront engineering, and strong nonlinearities, to name a few, with significant advantages over traditional approaches particularly in the THz frequency range. The functionalities can be further enhanced through the integration of functional materials such as semiconductors, phase transition materials, and graphene, forming hybrid metasurfaces for active/dynamic switching and frequency tuning, and enabling efficient THz signal modulation that are relevant and can be implemented to communication and imaging.
Short Biography
Hou-Tong Chen received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from the University of Science and Technology of China in 1997 and 2000, respectively, and his Ph.D degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2004, all in physics. During 2005-2008 he was a postdoctoral research associate in Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). Since 2008, Dr. Chen has been a technical staff member in the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies (CINT) at LANL, where he has been leading multi-million dollar projects in the fields of metamaterials, terahertz, and ultrafast nanophotonics. Dr. Chen has co-authored over 60 peer-reviewed journal papers and 3 US patents, and delivered over 60 invited presentations in international conferences as well as colloquia and seminars in research institutions. He has been serving as a member of the Editorial Committee in a few journals and also in the organizing committee, advisory committee, or technical program committee of numerous conferences and workshops. Dr. Chen received LANL Achievement Awards in 2007 and 2013, and LANL Fellows’ Prize in 2015. He was elected Fellow of America Physical Society in 2015.
In pursuit of all-graphene THz RF systems: the convergence of nanoelectronic RF GFET transceivers and miniaturised graphennas
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Eduard Alarcón
Associate professor |
Using graphene as the material to conceive, design and implement a new generation of transistors with extreme high frequency capabilities reaching the THz band is crystallizing in a notable degree of maturity. Out of that, the scientific community is envisioning circuits encompassing multiple devices in a graphene-based integrated circuit implementing more sophisticated functionalities towards wireless communications applications. Such functional RF graphene circuits require concurrently addressing the circuit-aware GFET device model extraction, as well as exploring alternative primitive circuits for both baseband and RF functions which recognize and exploit the uniqueness of GFET characteristics beyond its high-speed capabilities. On the other hand, owing to the ability of graphene to support plasmon polariton waves in the THz frequency range, it enables the miniaturization and electrical tunability of antennas to allow wireless communications among nanosystems. This tutorial will address the topic of GFET-based RF circuits aiming THz band operation, specifically for communications applications, first providing a survey and categorized state of the art, in turn particularly emphasizing tight joint characterization, modelling and circuit co-design, both for the device-circuit interface, as well as for the RF transceiver and graphene antenna interface, in pursuit of enabling new applications such as Graphene Wireless Networks on chip which leverage the uniqueness of the THz band at the ultra small scale.
Short Biography
Eduard Alarcón received the M. Sc. (National award) and Ph.D. degrees (honors) in EE from UPC BarcelonaTech, Spain, in 1995 and 2000, respectively. Since 1995 he has been with the Department of Electronic Engineering at UPC, where he became Associate Professor in 2000. He has been visiting professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, US, and thr Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm, Sweden. He has co-authored more than 300 scientific publications, 5 books, 7 book chapters and 10 patents, and has been involved in different National, European and US (DARPA, NSF) R&D projects within his research interests including the areas of on-chip energy management and RF circuits, energy harvesting and wireless energy transfer, and nanotechnology-enabled wireless communications. He has received the GOOGLE Faculty Research Award (2013), SAMSUNG Advanced Institute of Technology Global Research Program gift (2012), and INTEL Doctoral Student Honor Programme Fellowship (2014). He has given 30 invited or plenary lectures and tutorials in Europe, America and Asia, was appointed by the IEEE CAS society as distinguished lecturer for 2009-2010 and lectures yearly MEAD courses at EPFL. He is Vice President for Technical Activities of IEEE CAS (2016) and serves as deputy Editor-in-Chief (2016) of IEEE Journal on Emerging topics in Circuits and Systems.
THz Channel Modeling for Wireless Communication
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Janne Lehtomäki
Adjunct Professor |
The interest for THz band wireless communication for macro-scale communication (such as indoor ultra-high data wireless links over a few meters) is increasing. For nano-scale, the THz band is also a natural band to operate with graphene based antennas. This tutorial presents the main channel and propagation effects affecting wireless communication in the THz band. Molecular absorption leads to a large number of absorption lines (exponential loss) which can greatly exceed the free space path loss (square-law loss). Multiple scattering is possible at THz. The THz channel also has the traditional channel effects such as the specular reflection, diffuse scattering, penetration, and diffraction. However, for example penetration is greatly different than in lower frequencies, losses are generally much larger. Measurement results for all of these effects in the THz band are presented and differences to lower bands are discussed. It has been predicted that the THz channel will have a new noise form called molecular noise caused by the energy lost due to molecular absorption. Different forms in which the absorbed energy can re-appear are discussed.
Short Biography
Janne Lehtomäki got his doctorate from the University of Oulu, Finland, in 2005. Currently, he is University Researcher at the University of Oulu, Faculty of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, Centre for Wireless Communications. He spent the fall 2013 semester at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta as a visiting scholar. Currently, he is focusing on cognitive radios & spectrum usage measurements, and terahertz band wireless communication. Dr. Lehtomäki has served as the managing guest editor for Nano Communication Networks Special Issue on Electromagnetic Communication in Nano-scale (June 2016). He was a TPC co-chair for IEEE WCNC 2015 and 2016 International Workshop on Smart Spectrum, and a publicity co-chair/publications chair for ACM NANOCOM 2015 and 2016, respectively. Dr. Lehtomäki has published over 100 peer-reviewed journal and conference papers. He co-authored the paper receiving the Best Paper Award in IEEE WCNC 2012. He is an editorial board member of Physical Communication.