Considerations on Local Oscillator Isolation in a Terahertz Wireless Link Used for Future Communication Systems

Monolithic integrated circuits operating in the low terahertz region, at frequencies beyond 275 GHz, have been successfully employed in communication systems, demonstrating that high data rates can be achieved. This paper analyzes and identifies one of the main factors that influence one important impairment of a 300 GHz wireless system: the isolation of the local oscillator. Improving this isolation will have a positive effect on the quality of the data transmissions, allowing better figures of merit, like error vector magnitude and bit error rates and higher order modulation formats, which will result in an even higher data rate.