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A new design of ultra-small silicon chip called a multiplexer will effectively manage terahertz waves which are key to the next generation of communications: 6G and beyond.

Researchers from Osaka University, Japan and the 成人大片, Australia have worked together to produce the new multiplexer made from pure silicon for terahertz-range communications in the 300-GHz band.

鈥淚n order to control the great spectral bandwidth of terahertz waves, a multiplexer, which is used to split and join signals, is critical for dividing the information into manageable chunks that can be more easily processed and so can be transmitted faster from one device to another,鈥� said Associate Professor Withawat Withayachumnankul from the 成人大片鈥檚 School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering.

鈥淯p until now compact and practical multiplexers have not been developed for the terahertz range. The new terahertz multiplexers, which are economical to manufacture, will be extremely useful for ultra-broadband wireless communications."Associate Professor Withawat Withayachumnankul

鈥淭he shape of the chips we have developed is the key to combining and splitting channels so that more data can be processed more rapidly. Simplicity is its beauty.鈥�

People around the world are increasingly using mobile devices to access the internet and the number of connected devices is multiplying exponentially. Soon machines will be communicating with each other in the聽 which will require even more powerful wireless networks able to transfer large volumes of data fast.

Terahertz waves are a portion of the electromagnetic spectrum that has a raw spectral bandwidth that is far broader than that of conventional wireless communications, which is based upon microwaves. The team has developed ultra-compact and efficient terahertz multiplexers, thanks to a novel optical tunnelling process.

鈥淎 typical four-channel optical multiplexer might span more than 2000 wavelengths. This would be about two meters in length in the 300-GHz band,鈥� said Dr Daniel Headland from the University of Osaka who is lead author of the study.

鈥淥ur device is merely 25 wavelengths across, which offers dramatic size reduction by a factor of 6000.鈥�

The new multiplexer covers a spectral bandwidth that is over 30 times the total spectrum that is allocated in Japan for 4G/LTE, the fastest mobile technology currently available and 5G which is the next generation, combined. As bandwidth is related to data rate, ultra-high-speed digital transmission is possible with the new multiplexer.

鈥淥ur four-channel multiplexer can potentially support aggregate data rate of 48 gigabits per second (Gbit/s), equivalent to that of uncompressed 8K ultrahigh definition video being streamed in real time,鈥� said Associate Professor Masayuki Fujita, the team鈥檚 leader from Osaka University.

鈥淭o make the entire system portable, we plan to integrate this multiplexer with to provide compact, multi-channel terahertz transceivers.鈥�

The modulation scheme employed in the teams鈥� study was quite basic; terahertz power was simply switched on-and-off to transmit binary data. More advanced techniques are available that can squeeze even higher data rates towards 1 Terabit/s into a given bandwidth allocation.

鈥淭he new multiplexer can be mass-produced, just like computer chips, but much simpler. So large-scale market penetration is possible,鈥� said Professor Tadao Nagatsuma from Osaka University.

鈥淭his would enable applications in 6G and beyond, as well as the Internet of Things, and low-probability-of-intercept communications between compact aircraft such as autonomous drones.鈥�

This study, which is published in the and was financed by the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) CREST fund and an Australia Research Council (ARC) Discovery grant, builds on the team鈥檚 work in 2020 when they created substrate-free, metal-free, silicon micro-photonics for efficient integrated terahertz devices. This innovation opened a pathway to convert existing nanophotonic multiplexers into the terahertz realm.

About Osaka University

was founded in 1931 as one of the seven imperial universities of Japan and now has expanded to one of Japan's leading comprehensive universities. The University has now embarked on open research revolution from a position as Japan's most innovative university and among the most innovative institutions in the world according to Reuters 2015 Top 100 Innovative Universities and the Nature Index Innovation 2017. The university's ability to innovate from the stage of fundamental research through the creation of useful technology with economic impact stems from its broad disciplinary spectrum.聽

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