Analysis and Design of Highly Directive Microstrip Terahertz Antennas for Wireless Communication Systems

Abstract

Terahertz frequency (THz) band is coarsely defined as a portion of the electromagnetic spectrum which extends from 0.1 THz to 10 THz. Due to the unavailability of the powerful sources, detectors and other hardware, this regime of the spectrum has remained untouched by scientists and researchers for a long time and named as terahertz band gap . In the last two decades, the semi-conductor technology has grown exponentially and its effect on the research in this terahertz bandgap has also been noticed. With the sustaining progress in the terahertz research, various potential applications of this spectrum in the field of science and technology have been reported. newlineApart from the conventional applications, a new area of debate is the application of the terahertz band in the future wireless communication system. Due to the exponential growth in the population, the demand for the high-data rate communication systems is increasing. As per the latest survey, by 2015, the communication system has to enhance its bandwidth to cater the data rate upto 40-100 Gbps for the indoor and 100 Gbps for outdoor communication and it is a challenge to the scientific community. There are two possible ways in which the data rate can be enhanced. First, by increasing the bandwidth of the communication system but the system is inherited with the narrow bandwidth and in most of the cases the device bandwidth is only about 10% of its operating frequency. The next solution to this problem is to increase the operating frequency to such an extent that even with the narrow bandwidth, the communication system may fetch a high data-rate to target customers. Recently, to meet the high bandwidth requirement, 60 GHz and 90 GHz wireless systems have been developed but they are still insufficient to meet the future requirement. The next best solution to this problem is to move the operating frequency to the terahertz band which is sandwiched between microwave and far-infrared frequency band.