IEEE COMSOC Distinguished Lecture | Enabling Terahertz Communications towards 6G and Beyond Era by Prof Nan Yang, Australian National University

Terahertz (THz) communications are envisioned as an up-and-coming and pivotal wireless technology for the sixth generation (6G) and beyond era. In particular, the ultra-wide THz band ranging from 0.1 to 10 THz offers enormous potential to alleviate the spectrum scarcity and break the capacity limitation of emerging wireless systems (such as 4G-LTE and 5G NR). This will undoubtedly support epoch-making wireless applications that demand ultra-high quality service requirements and multi-terabits per second data transmission in the intelligent information society in the 2030s, such as terabit-per-second backhaul systems, ultra-high-definition content streaming among mobile devices, virtual/augmented reality, and wireless high-bandwidth secure communications.

This talk will describe the role and importance of THz communications for the 6G and beyond era, while briefly introducing the fundamental research on THz devices, channels, testbeds, and simulators. After this, a brief summary of recent research advances in THz communications will be given, with a focus on performance analysis, spectrum allocation, and hybrid beamforming. Finally, some of the significant challenges that need to be tackled for harnessing the benefits of THz communications in the 6G and beyond era will be discussed.