Terahertz meta-chip switch based on C-ring coupling

Terahertz switch is one of the key components of future communication, radar, and imaging systems. Limited by the strong electromagnetic coupling in subwavelength scale, the traditional terahertz switch is difficult to meet the increasing application requirements. In this paper, a parallel topology terahertz meta-chip switch based on the combination of equivalent circuit theory and electromagnetic coupling is proposed. The meta-chip is realized by adjusting the density of two-dimensional electron gas of InP-HEMT, which converts the electromagnetic coupling between the microstructure and microstrips. By using the 90 nm gate length InP-HEMT process, a C-ring loaded meta-chip is fabricated and tested in this paper. The results show an insertion loss lower than 1 dB with a 10 dB switching ratio, which is 20% higher than that without C-ring while ensuring the rather low insertion loss. It shows that the presented mechanism has positive significance for the design of terahertz band functional devices.

The scaled RCS measurement method for lossy targets via dynamically matching the reflection coefficients in the THz band

In the terahertz band, the dispersive characteristic of dielectric material is one of the major problems in the scaled radar cross section (RCS) measurement, which is inconsistent with the electrodynamics similitude deducted according to the Maxwell’s equations. Based on the high-frequency estimation method of physical optics (PO), a scaled RCS measurement method for lossy objects is proposed through dynamically matching the reflection coefficients according to the distribution of the object’s facets. Simulations on the model of SLICY were conducted, the inversed RCS of the lossy prototype was obtained using the proposed method. Via comparing the inversed RCS with the calculated results, the validity of the proposed method is demonstrated. The proposed method provides an effective solution to the scaled RCS measurement for lossy objects in the THz band.

Millimeter-wave band subsurface sounding module

Radio-wave devices are used for many environmental and material research tasks. These devices and the development of relatively simple and affordable quasi-optic radio wave receivers and transmitters of millimeter and terahertz bands are important for numerous applications. Results of the design of a terahertz-band quasioptical transmitter-receiver module are presented. The module is intended for the remote detection of various objects and for measuring the depolarized field components backscattered by various long objects hidden behind obstacles (building materials and/or everyday items that prevent visual contact with the objects). These may be interfaces between materials with different dielectric constants, fiber optic cables, electric cables, and otherobjects. Results of full-scale experimental testing of the module on the detection of electric cables buried under plater in the wall of a building are presented.

Modelling Multilayer Communication Channel in Terahertz Band for Medical Applications

In this work we present a multi-layer channel model for terahertz communication that incorporates both layers of human body tissues and textile layers. Many research works tackled communication channel modelling in human body alone while some other research focused on textile characterization/modelling alone. There is a real gap in connecting these different models. To investigate this, a multi-layer channel model for terahertz communication is developed, this model assumes external textile layer stacked over layers of human body tissues. The electromagnetic properties of the different layers are extracted from previous works that used time domain spectroscopy (TDS) in the terahertz band to characterize each of the considered layers. The model is implemented as a flexible MATLAB/Octave program that enables the simulation of layers with either fixed or random depths. This paper aims to pave the way to connecting patients’ in-body nano-nodes with off-body (on-cloth) nano-nodes by building such a combined channel model. This helps in many applications especially in the medical field. For example, having connected nano-nodes can help in diagnosing diseases, monitoring health by sending information to the external environment, treatment (e.g., increasing or decreasing a certain dose depending on the monitoring), etc. The obtained results show how the THz signal can be affected when it propagates through heterogeneous mediums (i.e., human body tissues and textile). Various types of path-loss has been calculated for this purpose and verified by comparison with results from previous research on separate models of human body and textile.

Stack-based grating for wideband polarization splitter in terahertz

A novel wideband terahertz polarization beam splitter with special diffraction orders working at terahertz band is described in this paper. The polarizer can achieve high diffraction efficiency and uniformity in the 2.50 - 2.56 THz band. Based on rigorous coupled-wave analysis (RCWA) and simulated annealing algorithm, we proposed an efficient algorithm to optimize the polarizer. After calculations, 98.45% single-port high-efficiency reflection for transverse electric (TE) polarization and 42.33%/42.57% highly uniform dual-port beam splitting for transverse magnetic (TM) polarization were finally obtained. In addition, through RCWA and simplified modal method, the electromagnetic field distributions of TE and TM polarizations are shown visually and described quantitatively. Moreover, the results displayed in Sec. 3 prove that the grating possesses the characteristics of relatively large bandwidth and insensitivity to the incident angle. Therefore, the novel scheme in this paper has great reference value for the research of terahertz modulation devices and the integration of terahertz communication systems.