Descripción del proyecto
El procesamiento de señales de terahercios llega a un nuevo nivel
Las comunicaciones en la banda de terahercios (THz) están en el punto de mira como facilitadoras clave para la futura generación de sistemas de comunicaciones inalámbricos. El rango de terahercios posee un enorme potencial sin aprovechar para una variedad de aplicaciones, como la siguiente generación de comunicaciones inalámbricas, la detección, la seguridad y la imagenología médica, entre otras. El proyecto financiado con fondos europeos ELEPHANT se alejará de las plataformas fotónicas-electrónicas actuales para crear una nueva plataforma integrada que permita el transporte y el procesamiento de THz de forma flexible y con pocas pérdidas en el ámbito óptico, lo cual permitirá transportar frecuencias de THz con bajas pérdidas a grandes distancias. El proyecto se basa en anteriores resultados vanguardistas sobre bloques de procesamiento de señales fotónicas con anchos de banda de THz empleando nanocables de silicio compactos (de decenas de µm de longitud), así como en la reciente demostración de los moduladores plasmónicos que ofrecen velocidades de 500 GHz, las mayores hasta la fecha.
Objetivo
The ELEPHANT project aims at combining the best of four worlds by bringing together the fastest electronics, photonics, plasmonics and antennas to create a novel enabling technology for future THz signal processing.
The THz range has a tremendous untapped potential for a breadth of applications, as next-generation wireless communications, sensing, security, medical imaging, and more. However, efficient transport and processing of THz signals is a major challenge to this date, as at those frequencies electronic circuits are inherently limited by high dispersion and material losses. As a consequence, current approaches still rely on low-efficiency discrete components, which suffer from limited power, high losses and very high costs. While photonics allows low-loss transport of THz frequencies over large distances and broadband processing, today’s electronic-photonic platforms do not offer the required conversion speeds. Current efforts using organic materials have not proven sufficient stability and scalability.
I plan to solve the challenge of THz signal processing by creating a novel integrated THz platform that allows to convert THz signals to the optical domain efficiently and with high fidelity, and to process them using a low-loss photonic processing core with THz bandwidth.
The project fully builds on my cutting-edge results on photonic signal processing blocks with THz bandwidths using compact (10s µm-long) silicon photonics nanowires, and my recent demonstration of plasmonic modulators offering 500 GHz speeds, the fastest to date. I will create novel architectures suitable for analog processing and realize them in a scalable manner on bipolar CMOS platforms, together with THz antennas for wireless interfacing, and high-speed amplifiers to achieve the signal powers needed in real-world applications.
The new platform will impact all the crucial THz fields, and it will be put to the test by creating the first photonic-wireless THz beamforming transceiver.
Ámbito científico
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringelectronic engineeringsignal processing
- natural scienceschemical sciencesinorganic chemistrymetalloids
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringinformation engineeringtelecommunicationsradio technology
- engineering and technologymedical engineeringdiagnostic imaging
Programa(s)
Régimen de financiación
ERC-STG - Starting GrantInstitución de acogida
10623 Berlin
Alemania