Recent trends in Terahertz communication: applications and open research problems

Abstract

Over the past years, the demand to meet the bandwidth requirement forces us to increase the carrier frequency used for wireless communication. To fulfill the rapid increase of mobile data demand the research community addressed the development of wide radio bands such as millimeter wave (mmW) frequencies and others were attracted towards the optical communication frequency which allowed high data rates, better physical security, and avoids the interference of electromagnetic waves. With an exponential rise in the data traffic the terahertz frequency band seems to be promising to support the next generation wireless network beyond fifth-generation (5G) as well as bridging a gap between optical frequency range and millimeter wave frequency range. This paper provides a review on key technologies encountered in THz wireless communication systems such as channel modeling, beamforming, and beam tracking using Massive MIMO and use of artificial intelligence (AI) based framework to meet the future demands for future generation networks and also provide a case study on THz channel modeling using the machine learning technique. It also throws light on the challenges faced in THz communication.