QAM-4 Dielectric Waveguide Communication Link for mid-range Distances at W-Band Frequencies

Numerical analyses have shown that minimizing the dispersion of dielectric waveguides (DWGs) is essential for high data rate communication links at mm-wave frequencies. In this paper an experimental QAM-4 communication link at 83 GHz is presented that uses DWGs with different dispersion characteristics to demonstrate their impact on data rate and link distance. As a result, a DWG communication link with a data rate of 8 Gbit/s and DWG length of 15 m was realized. The obtained results significantly exceed the maximum data rates at 15 m of recently published works without the need of energy-consuming equalization. In addition, a 4 Gbit/s communication link over 30
$m$
was demonstrated that doubles the maximum transmission distance of previously published DWG communication links in the mm-wave frequency range. The results also indicate that even higher data rates over such long distances are possible, which makes dielectric waveguides competitive to baseband transmission systems like twisted pair and twinaxial cables.