Terahertz Band Communication: An Old Problem Revisited and Research Directions for the Next Decade

TLDR

Terahertz band communications are envisioned as a key technology for 6G and beyond, with growing research interest driven by comprehensive roadmaps and numerous studies exploring its potential applications. This paper reviews the past decade of THz research, revisiting old challenges and summarizing achievements to date. The authors present open challenges and new research directions across devices, channel behavior, communication and networking, and physical testbeds. The paper concludes that these key aspects will position THz communications as a pillar of 6G and beyond wireless systems in the next decade.

Abstract

Terahertz (THz) band communications are envisioned as a key technology for 6G and Beyond. As a fundamental wireless infrastructure, THz communication can boost abundant promising applications. In 2014, our team published two comprehensive roadmaps for the development and progress of THz communication networks, which helped the research community to start research on this subject afterwards. The topic of THz communications became very important and appealing to the research community due to 6G wireless systems design and development in recent years. Many papers are getting published covering different aspects of wireless systems using the THz band. With this paper, our aim is looking back to the last decade and revisiting the old problems and pointing out what has been achieved in the research community so far. Furthermore, in this paper, open challenges and new research directions still to be investigated for the THz band communication systems are presented, by covering diverse topics ranging from devices, channel behavior, communication and networking, to physical testbeds and demonstration systems. The key aspects presented in this paper will enable THz communications as a pillar of 6G and Beyond wireless systems in the next decade.