Review of terahertz and subterahertz wireless communications

According to Edholm's law, the demand for point-to-point bandwidth in wireless short-range communications has doubled every 18 months over the last 25 years. It can be predicted that data rates of around 5-10 Gb/s will be required in ten years. In order to achieve 10 Gb/s data rates, the carrier frequencies need to be increased beyond 100 GHz. Over the past ten years, several groups have considered the prospects of using sub-terahertz (THz) and THz waves (100-2000 GHz) as a means to transmit data wirelessly. Some of the reported advantages of THz communications links are inherently higher bandwidth compared to millimeter wave links, less susceptibility to scintillation effects than infrared wireless links, and the ability to use THz links for secure communications. Our goal of this paper is to provide a comprehensive review of wireless sub-THz and THz communications. (C) 2010 American Institute of Physics. [doi: 10.1063/1.3386413]