The development of terahertz wireless networks involves many challenges. Among these is the urgent need for external devices that can provide essential signal processing functions for freely propagating terahertz waves. Examples include modulators, multiplexers, and beam steering components. Various strategies have been explored, including active and passive waveguides, metamaterial and photonic crystal structures, and devices based on novel materials such as graphene. This tutorial will review some of the recent highlights in this field.  

Dr. Mittleman received his B.S. in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1988, and his M.S. in 1990 and Ph.D. in 1994, both in physics from the University of California, Berkeley. He then joined AT&T Bell Laboratories as a post-doctoral member of the technical staff. Dr. Mittleman joined the ECE Department at Rice University in September 1996. In 2015, he moved to the School of Engineering at Brown University. His research interests involve the science and technology of terahertz radiation. He is a Fellow of the OSA, the APS, and the IEEE, and in September will begin a three-year term as Chair of the International Society for Infrared Millimeter and Terahertz Waves.

Today's silicon process technology makes it possible to integrate everything from antennas to processors on a single chip at almost no cost. This creates new opportunities for implementing complex sensors and systems on a millimeter scale. To create such devices, an understanding of physics, waves, electromagnetics, and high-frequency electronics is essential. In this presentation, I will show how the convergence of these fields has resulted in single-chip picosecond pulse radiators, wirelessly synchronized chips with sub-psec synchronization accuracy, and miniaturized spectrometers.

In the first section of the talk, I will present techniques for generating and detecting picosecond pulses, based on a novel laser-free Digital-to-Impulse (D2I) radiation. This technology can produce broadband pulses with a record width of 1.9psec that cover a frequency spectrum from 30GHz to 1.1THz and that have a resolution of 2Hz at 1THz. I will discuss how this technology enables us to perform broadband THz spectroscopy, hyper-spectral 3D imaging, and Tbits/sec wireless communication.

In the second part, I will present my work on precision time transfer and wireless synchronization of widely spaced chips. This technique eliminates the wires between the elements of a distributed array and makes it possible to build a highly flexible large aperture.

Dr. Babakhani is an Associate Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Rice University and the Director of Rice Integrated Systems and Circuits Laboratory. He is also a member of DARPA Micro-Systems Exploratory Council (MEC). Dr. Babakhani was a Louis Owen Junior Chair Assistant Professor at Rice before being promoted to associate professor in July 2017. He received his B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Sharif University of Technology in 2003 and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Caltech in 2005 and 2008, respectively. He was a postdoctoral scholar at Caltech in 2009 and a research scientist at IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center in 2010. Dr. Babakhani has been awarded multiple best paper awards, including the Best Paper Award at the IEEE SiRF conference in 2016, the Best Paper Award at the IEEE RWS Symposium in 2015, the Best Paper Award at the IEEE IMS Symposium in 2014, and the 2nd-place in the Best Paper Awards at the IEEE APS Symposium 2016 and IEEE IMS Symposium 2016. He has published more than 85 papers in peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings as well as 21 issued or pending patents. His research is supported by NSF, DARPA, AFOSR, ONR, NASA, the W. M. Keck Foundation, SRC, and more than 10 companies. He received a prestigious NSF CAREER award in 2015, an Innovation Award from Northrop Grumman in 2014, and a DARPA Young Faculty Award in 2012. He also received the Caltech Electrical Engineering Department's Charles Wilts Best PhD Thesis Prize for his work titled “Near-Field Direct Antenna Modulation.” He was the recipient of the Microwave Graduate Fellowship in 2007, the Grand Prize in the Stanford-Berkeley-Caltech Innovators Challenge in 2006, the Analog Devices Inc. Outstanding Student Designer Award in 2005, as well as a Caltech Special Institute Fellowship and an Atwood Fellowship in 2003. He was also the Gold Medal winner at both the National Physics Competition in 1998 and the 30th International Physics Olympiad in Padova, Italy, in 1999.

Already a couple of years ago THz communications have not only become an attractive new research area on channel modeling but also triggered a couple of projects heading to develop hardware demonstrators. In parallel discussions and activities in standardization and regulation took off. In March 2014, IEEE 802 established its project P802.15.3d with the task to develop the worldwide first wireless communications standard operating in the 300 GHz frequency band. The standardization process is accompanied by activities at the ITU-R level targeting on the provision of an appropriate regulatory framework at the World Radio Conference 2019 (WRC-2019) via a dedicated agenda item. The lecturer has been actively involved in all those areas. The talk will provide a brief overview on channel modeling at 300 GHz, present results achieved by a 300-Ghz HW demonstrator with electrical beam steering and will sketch the current status at IEEE 802 and the WRC 2019 preparations. The paper close with an outlook towards applications of THz links for nano communications.

Thomas Kurner received his Dipl.-Ing. degree in Electrical Engineering in 1990, and his Dr.-Ing. degree in 1993, both from Univerity of Karlsruhe (Germany). From 1990 to 1994 he was with the Institut für Hochstfrequenztechnik und Elektronik (IHE) at the University of Karlsruhe working on wave propagation modelling, radio channel characterisation and radio network planning. Since 2003 he is Full University Professor for Mobile Radio Systems at the Technische Universitat Braunschweig. He has been engaged in several international bodies such as ITU-R SG 3, UMTS Forum Spectrum Aspects Group, COST 231/273/259 where he chaired the working group 'Network Aspects', COST 2100 and COST IC 1004. He participated in the European projects FP-5-IST-MOMENTUM on methods for 'Automatic Planning of large-scale Radio Networks', ICT-FP7-SOCRATES on 'Self-Organisation in Wireless Networks', FP7-SME-GreenNets on 'Power consumption and CO2 footprint reduction in mobile networks by advanced automated network management approaches', FP7-SEMAOUR ('Self-management for unified heterogeneous radio access networks'), Medea+-Qstream /'Ultra-high Data Rate Wireless Communication') and H2020-iBroW ('Innovative ultra-BROadband ubiquitous Wireless communications through terahertz transceivers'). Prof. Kurner represents Technische Universitat Braunschweig at the NGMN (Next Generation Mobile Networks) alliance as an advisory member. He has actively contributed to the channel modelling document supporting the standardization of IEEE 802.11ad. Currently he is a voting member of IEEE 802.15 and is chairing the IEEE 802.15 IG THz and the IEEE 802.15.3d TG 100G. He was the project coordinator of the TERAPAN project ("Terahertz communications for future personal area networks") funded by the German Ministry of Research and Development. Prof. Kürner is a member of the Board of Directors of the European Association on Antennas and Propagation (EurAAP). He served as Vice-Chair Propagation at the European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EuCAP) in 2007, 2009 and 2014. He is a founding member and co-organizer of all six editions of the International Workshop on Self-Organizing Networks (IWSON). Since 2008 he is Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology. In 2012 he was a guest lecturer at Dublin City University within the Telecommunications Graduate Initiative in Ireland.

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