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TechWaTch Top Research Institutions Begin to Unlock 6G By Greg Rankin
the world is now heavily focused on solving a significant problem that is expected to arise within the next few years. Antenna-to-antenna links or
W
the “backhaul of the network” are essentially limited to frequencies under 100 GHz. However, experts are predicting that by around 2025 these lower frequencies, un- der 80 GHz, will no longer be enough to support the evolution of 5G or 5G plus, especially in densely populated areas. “For 5G networks, at some
point, every user will expect to have at least 1 GB/s or higher,”
hile the rollout of 5G is still in its infancy, bleed- ing-edge research around
says Dr. Guillaume Ducournau. “So, if you’re running 5G in a crowded place, like a commercial center or a big city, we have to be able to manage the huge data rates at the antenna collecting point.” Dr. Ducournau is a profes- sor at Université de Lille in France and a top academic re- searcher in THz communications. “Currently there is a dearth
of components capable of operat- ing in excess of 100 GHz and then even fewer when you push into the THz regime where 6G is expected to excel,” continues Dr. Ducournau. “So, unless the in- dustry can come up with better components the problem is going to grow exponentially.”
Pushing Towards THz The issue with creating com-
ponents at frequencies above 100 GHz comes down to physics. At such a small-scale, available power and device power han- dling become a big challenge. Therefore, components at these frequencies must operate with exceptionally low insertion loss and extremely high performance. In addition to sufficient de-
vice power handling, high isola- tion between active components becomes of critical importance to minimize signal degradation and potential device destruction from signal reflections between com- ponents. For example, Faraday rota-
tion isolators — commonly re- ferred to simply as isolators — are two-port components that al- low EM signals to pass in one di- rection but absorb them in the opposite direction. “Isolators have low insertion
loss within the microwave bands, but at mmWave frequencies, where we were working at, the loss becomes increasingly prob- lematic,” explains Dr. Ducournau.
A Boost for mmWave Components
“After doing significant re-
search a few years ago, I discov- ered NASA had awarded a proj- ect to Micro Harmonics to devel- op mmWave isolators all the way to 300 GHz, and they showed very good performance,” recalls Dr. Ducournau. “I immediately called them up.” Micro Harmonics Corpora- tion specializes in components
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for mmWave applications and successfully developed an ad- vanced line of commercial off- the-shelf (COTS) circulators, iso- lators, and hybrid circulators, many of which can operate well into the THz regime. Professor Ducournau select-
ed an isolator that operates with WR-3.4 (220-325 GHz) and fea- tures a large usable bandwidth of dozens of GHz on either side of the center frequency. “This al- lowed us to get the first-ever de- vice characterization of a low noise amplifier operating at 300 GHz,” states Dr. Ducournau. His research team success-
fully characterized the noise floor (NF) along with the IP3 and IP5 of the amplifier, which are measurements of nonlinear fre- quency performance. In addition to isolators,
“there’s also a need for circula- tors at these very high frequen- cies,” explains Dr. Ducournau. “Circulators form part of the core system for communication appli- cations but also for radar. Hav- ing these available could be a big boost for system implementation of early prototypes.” For example, a new hybrid
circulator recently developed op- erates in the 100+ GHz range which will be crucial to solving many of the 6G bottlenecks with- in the backhaul of the network. The hybrid circulator has a
much larger working bandwidth from 150 GHz to 190 GHz. The current state-of-the-art Y-junc- tion circulator has a bandwidth of only a few GHz at these fre- quencies.
A Small Footprint Simply attaining higher fre-
quencies is not the only consider- ation when moving new research from the lab to commercial pro- duction. Minimizing the size and weight of mmWave components is especially important in today’s wireless applications. These types of improve-
ments in commercial compo- nents, along with leading re- searchers in the field, are push- ing towards widespread commer- cial 6G technologies potentially
by the end of this decade. Contact: Micro Harmonics,
20 S Roanoke Street, Suite 202, Fincastle, VA 24090 % 540-473- 9983 E-mail:
sales@mhc1.com Web:
www.microharmonics.com r
October, 2022
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