Plasma-Wave Detectors for Terahertz Wireless Communication

Author

Blin, Stéphane ; Teppe, Frédéric ; Tohme, Lucie ; Hisatake, Shintaro ; Arakawa, Kazuki ; Nouvel, Philippe ; Coquillat, Dominique ; Pénarier, Annick ; Torres, Jérémie ; Varani, Luca ; Knap, Wojciech ; Nagatsuma, Tadao

Author_Institution

GIS Teralab, Univ. Montpellier 2, Montpellier, France

Volume

33

Issue

10

fYear

2012

Firstpage

1354

Lastpage

1356

Abstract

We report on terahertz wireless communication experiments at 0.3 THz using 250-nm gate-length GaAs/AlGaAs field-effect transistor (FET) as a detector and unitraveling-carrier photodiode as a source. The physical mechanism of the detection process is terahertz wave rectification on nonlinearities related to overdamped plasma oscillations in the transistor channel. We present an experimental study of rectification bandwidth and show for the first time that room-temperature direct detection with modulation bandwidth of up to 8 GHz can be achieved, thus showing that nanometer-sized FETs can be used as valuable detectors in all-solid-state terahertz wireless communication systems.

Keywords

field effect transistors; gallium arsenide; modulation; oscillations; radio networks; GaAs-AlGaAs; all-solid-state terahertz wireless communication systems; detection process; field-effect transistor; frequency 0.3 THz; modulation bandwidth; nanometer-sized FET; overdamped plasma oscillations; physical mechanism; plasma-wave detectors; rectification bandwidth; room-temperature direct detection; unitraveling-carrier photodiode; wavelength 250 nm; Bandwidth; Detectors; FETs; Frequency modulation; Wireless communication; Communications technology; field-effect transistors (FETs); high-electron-mobility transistors; nanoelectronics; plasma waves; receivers; terahertz;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Electron Device Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0741-3106

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/LED.2012.2210022

Filename

6291741