Measurements on penetration loss in terahertz band

Results on penetration measurements through different materials at the terahertz band (0.1 - 10 THz) are reported. These materials include common materials found at any home or office, i.e., plastic, glass, paper, and hardboard. The measurements were conducted with terahertz time domain spectroscopy (THz-TDS) method and with the TeraView TeraPulse measurement device. The results show that the THz radiation penetrates through these materials and the losses through the materials are small enough to theoretically allow communication through them. However, the propagation through the materials does not only introduce loss, but delay as well. It may cause problems in delay sensitive detection, e.g., the symbol to be detected may slide off the detection window if the signal is shadowed by an object. Also, it can cause inter-symbol interference if the symbol separation is small. Furthermore, we show frequency domain results for the penetration which show that the higher frequencies are more prone to the penetration loss than the lower end of the THz band.