A 50 Gbps Real-Time Wireless Communication System at 252 GHz Using FPGA Baseband Modem

In this paper, we present a high-speed, real-time wireless communication system demonstration with a 50 Gigabits per second raw data rate at 252 GHz. A field programmable gate array baseband module is developed for two 5 GHz bandwidth channels with digital-to-analog converters and analog-to-digital converters sampling at 4.8 Giga-sample per second, each capable of transmitting and receiving Ethernet traffic in real-time at a 25 Gbps raw data rate with 64 quadrature amplitude modulation. Both transmitter and receiver frontends consist of two frequency-conversion stages at intermediate frequency (5-16 GHz) and THz frequency (235-270 GHz), respectively, with high-selectivity bandpass filters applied in both stages. Details of the filter's design principle and fabrication process are provided in the paper. The wireless communication link is demonstrated over a distance of 0.4 m in the laboratory environment with a coherent local oscillator setup, and an uncoded bit error rate of 1 × 10^-3 was acquired. The high-speed and real-time feature makes this system a competent candidate for future wireless applications, including point-to-point communications, backhauls, and inter-satellite communications in the sixth-generation era.