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posted by martyb on Wednesday June 03 2020, @04:14AM   Printer-friendly
from the don't-sneeze! dept.

Atom-Thin Switches Could Route 5G and 6G Radio Signals

Two-dimensional, atom-thin materials are good for a lot of things, but until two years ago, nobody thought they'd make good memory devices. Then Deji Akinwande, Jack Lee, and their team at UT Austin tried it out. It turns out that sandwiching a 2D material like molybdenum disulfide between two electrodes makes a memristor—a two-terminal device that stores data as a change in resistance. In research reported last week, they've proved a very important potential application for these "atomristors"—analog RF switches for 5G and perhaps future 6G radios.

[...] The key figure of merit for RF switches is called cut-off frequency. It's a combination of on-state resistance and off-state capacitance, both of which should be low in a good switch. Terahertz values for cutoff frequency indicate that a device is a good candidate for an RF switch, and the experimental hBN[*] devices scored 129 terahertz. As part of the testing, the team transmitted real-time high-definition video at a rate of 8.5 gigabits per second using a 100 gigahertz carrier frequency, which they say is more than sufficient for 5G's streaming needs. At this data rate, several movies can be downloaded in a few seconds. They reported their results in Nature Electronics (DOI: 10.1038/s41928-020-0416-x) (DX).

[...] For 6G frequencies, which are expected to include frequencies in the terahertz range (300 to 3000 GHz), the UT Austin team is planning new laboratory measurements.

[*] hBN: hexagonal boron nitride and Wikipedia.


Original Submission

Related Stories

Scientists Build Ultra-High-Speed Terahertz Wireless Chip 12 comments

Scientists build ultra-high-speed terahertz wireless chip:

To enable data transmission speeds that surpass the 5th Generation (5G) standards for telecommunications, scientists from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) and Osaka University in Japan have built a new chip using a concept called photonic topological insulators.

Published recently in Nature Photonics, the researchers showed that their chip can transmit terahertz (THz) waves resulting in a data rate of 11 Gigabits per second (Gbit/s), which is capable of supporting real-time streaming of 4K high-definition video, and exceeds the hitherto theoretical limit of 10 Gbit/s for 5G wireless communications.

[...] fundamental challenges need to be tackled before THz waves could be used reliably in telecommunications. Two of the biggest issues are the material defects and transmission error rates found in conventional waveguides such as crystals or hollow cables.

These issues were overcome using Photonic Topological Insulators (PTI), which allows light waves to be conducted on the surface and edges of the insulators, akin to a train following railroads, rather than through the material.

[...] Their discovery could pave the way for more PTI THz interconnects—structures that connect various components in a circuit—to be integrated into wireless communication devices, to give the next generation '6G' communications an unprecedented terabytes-per-second speed (10 to 100 times faster than 5G) in future.

[...] "By employing THz technology, it can potentially boost intra-chip and inter-chip communication to support Artificial intelligence and cloud-based technologies, such as interconnected self-driving cars, which will need to transmit data quickly to other nearby cars and infrastructure to navigate better and also to avoid accidents."

[...] Areas of potential application for THz interconnect technology will include data centers, IOT devices, massive multicore CPUs (computing chips) and long-range communications, including telecommunications and wireless communication such as Wi-Fi.

Journal Reference:
Yihao Yang, Yuichiro Yamagami, Xiongbin Yu, et al. Terahertz topological photonics for on-chip communication, Nature Photonics (DOI: 10.1038/s41566-020-0618-9)

Previously:
(2020-07-15) Samsung's 6G White Paper: Available by 2030, 1,000 Gbps Peak Speed, 1 Gbps "User Experienced" Speed
(2020-06-02) Atom-Thin Switches Could Route 5G, and Even 6G Radio Signals
(2020-01-21) Record-Breaking Terahertz Laser Beam
(2019-03-17) FCC Will Allow Wireless Devices to Operate in the 95 GHz to 3 THz Range
(2018-03-30) Smaller and Faster: The Terahertz Computer Chip is Now Within Reach


Original Submission

Breakthrough Could Lead to Amplifiers for 6G Signals 20 comments

Breakthrough Could Lead to Amplifiers for 6G Signals

With 5G just rolling out and destined to take years to mature, it might seem odd to worry about 6G. But some engineers say that this is the perfect time to worry about it. One group, based at the University of California, Santa Barbara, has been developing a device that could be critical to efficiently pushing 6G's terahertz-frequency signals out of the antennas of future smartphones and other connected devices. They reported key aspects of the device—including an "n-polar" gallium nitride high-electron mobility transistor—in two papers that recently appeared in IEEE Electron Device Letters.

Testing so far has focused on 94 gigahertz frequencies, which are at the edge of terahertz. "We have just broken through records of millimeter-wave operation by factors which are just stunning," says Umesh K. Mishra, an IEEE Fellow who heads the UCSB group that published the papers. "If you're in the device field, if you improve things by 20 percent people are happy. Here, we have improved things by 200 to 300 percent."

Journal References:
Wenjian Liu, Islam Sayed, Brian Romanczyk, et al. Ru/N-Polar GaN Schottky Diode With Less Than 2 μA/cm² Reverse Current - IEEE Journals & Magazine, (DOI: 10.1109/LED.2020.3014524)
Brian Romanczyk, Weiyi Li, Matthew Guidry, et al. N-polar GaN-on-Sapphire Deep Recess HEMTs with High W-Band Power Density - IEEE Journals & Magazine, (DOI: 10.1109/LED.2020.3022401)

Related: FCC Will Allow Wireless Devices to Operate in the 95 GHz to 3 THz Range
Atom-Thin Switches Could Route 5G, and Even 6G Radio Signals
Samsung's 6G White Paper: Available by 2030, 1,000 Gbps Peak Speed, 1 Gbps "User Experienced" Speed
Scientists Build Ultra-High-Speed Terahertz Wireless Chip


Original Submission

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  • (Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 03 2020, @07:33AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 03 2020, @07:33AM (#1002643)

    Will this enable them to spread the Covid-19 more rapidly?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 03 2020, @02:12PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 03 2020, @02:12PM (#1002723)

      The beauty of this is that coronavirus is more than one atom thick, so this switch will actually act as a COVID filter. Yes, the holy grail of virus-free wireless communications is finally upon us.

      • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday June 03 2020, @05:27PM

        by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday June 03 2020, @05:27PM (#1002841) Journal

        The key figure of merit for RF switches is called cut-off frequency.

        Anonymous Cow Herds have sounded incoherent frequently enough to be told by the bar tender they are being cut off, won't be served, and need to find a ride home.

        --
        People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 03 2020, @05:30PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 03 2020, @05:30PM (#1002845)

    This they can do, but mashing up a lot of atoms to make a physical switch to turn off radio on a smartphone is hard.

  • (Score: 2) by Rupert Pupnick on Wednesday June 03 2020, @10:24PM

    by Rupert Pupnick (7277) on Wednesday June 03 2020, @10:24PM (#1002967) Journal

    Another key specification is power handling capability...

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