Channel Capacity of Electromagnetic Nanonetworks in the Terahertz Band

Abstract

Nanotechnology is enabling the development of devices in a scale ranging from one to a few hundred nanometers. Coordination and information sharing among these nano-devices will lead towards the development of future nanonetworks, rising new applications of nanotechnology in the medical, environmental and military fields. Despite the major progress in nano-device design and fabrication, it is still not clear how these atomically precise machines will communicate. The latest advancements in graphene- based electronics have opened the door to electromagnetic communication among nano-devices in the terahertz band (0.1-10 THz). This frequency band can potentially provide very large bandwidths, ranging from the entire band to several gigahertz- wide windows, depending on the transmission distance and the molecular composition of the channel. In this paper, the capacity of the terahertz channel is numerically evaluated by using a new terahertz propagation model, for different channel molecular compositions, and under different power allocation schemes. A novel communication technique based on the transmission of ultra-short pulses, less than one picosecond long, is motivated and quantitatively compared to the capacity- optimal power allocation scheme. The results show that for the very short range, up to a few tens of millimeters, the transmission of short pulses offer a realistic and still efficient way to exploit the terahertz channel.