300-GHz-band wireless communication using a low phase noise photonic source

The implementation of advanced multi-level modulation schemes such as quadrature phase-shift keying (QPSK) in contrast to the conventional on-off keying (OOK) is crucial to further boost the terahertz (THz) communications speed. Thereby, the phase noise reduction in the THz range is one of the key goals that need to be urgently achieved. In this paper, a low phase-noise photonic source based on the stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) phenomenon is first introduced in a 300-GHz-band QPSK wireless communication link. The highest data rate at forward-error-correction limited condition was 15 Gbaud with the SBS source, and transmission characteristics are evaluated and compared with conventional optical frequency comb (OFCG)-based sources at 5 Gbaud. Our Brillouin-based photonic source has been proven to offer better performances than the OFCG-based one with respect to the phase noise, the optical carrier to noise ratio, and the bit error rate in communications.