Terahertz Communication Testbeds: Challenges and Opportunities

Abstract: This study investigates an experimental software defined radio (SDR) implementation on 180 GHz. Rate scarcity and frequency sparsity are discussed as hardware bottlenecks. Experimental challenges are explained along with the derived system model of such a cascaded structure. Multiple error metrics for the terahertz (THz) signal are acquired, and various case scenarios are subsequently compared. The SDR-THz testbed reaches 3.2 Mbps with < 1 degree skew error. The use of a reflector plate can fine-tune the frequency error and gain imbalance in the expense of at least 14.91 dB signal-to-noise ratio. The results demonstrate the complete feasibility of SDR-based baseband signal generation in THz communication, revealing abundant opportunities to overcome hardware limitations in experimental research.