Sub-THz Antenna for High-Speed Wireless Communication Systems

TLDR

Terahertz links are poised to enable high‑data‑rate communication over a few meters, requiring antennas with high gain and wide bandwidth. This work proposes antenna designs tailored for short‑distance THz communication. The authors develop a single‑element dipole‑reflector antenna at 300 GHz, two director‑augmented dipole variants for higher gain, and a compact 1×4 array to maximize gain while preserving bandwidth. The designs deliver a 38.6 % impedance bandwidth (294–410 GHz) with 5.14 dBi gain, director variants achieving 8.01 and 9.6 dBi, and the array reaching 13.6 dBi with 89 % efficiency, demonstrating viability for high‑speed short‑range wireless systems.

Abstract

Terahertz (THz) links will play a major role in high data rate communication over a distance of few meters. In order to achieve this task, antenna designs with high gain and wideband characteristics will spearhead these links. In this contribution, we present different antenna designs that offer characteristics better suited to THz communication over short distances. Firstly, a single-element antenna having a dipole and reflector is designed to operate at 300 GHz, which is considered as a sub-terahertz band. That antenna achieves a wide impedance bandwidth of 38.6% from 294 GHz to 410 GHz with a gain of 5.14 dBi. Secondly, two designs based on the same dipole structure but with added directors are introduced to increase the gain while maintaining almost the same bandwidth. The gains achieved are 8.01 dBi and 9.6 dBi, respectively. Finally, an array of <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" id="M1"><mml:mn>1</mml:mn><mml:mo>×</mml:mo><mml:mn>4</mml:mn></mml:math> elements is used to achieve the highest possible gain of 13.6 dBi with good efficiency about 89% and with limited director elements for a planar compact structure to state-of-the-art literature. All the results achieved make the proposed designs viable candidates for high-speed and short-distance wireless communication systems.