MAC-Oriented Programmable Terahertz PHY via Graphene-based Yagi-Uda Antennas

Graphene is enabling a plethora of applications in a wide range of fields due to its unique electrical, mechanical, and optical properties. In the realm of wireless communications, graphene shows great promise for the implementation of miniaturized and tunable antennas in the terahertz band. These unique advantages open the door to new reconfigurable antenna structures which, in turn, enable novel communication protocols at different levels of the stack. This paper explores both aspects by, first, presenting a terahertz Yagi-Uda-like antenna concept that achieves reconfiguration both in frequency and beam direction simultaneously. Then, a programmable antenna controller design is proposed to expose the reconfigurability to the PHY and MAC layers, and several examples of its applicability are given. The performance and cost of the proposed scheme is evaluated through full-wave simulations and comparative analysis, demonstrating reconfigurability at nanosecond granularity with overheads below 0.02 mm$^{2}$ and 0.2 mW.Comment: Accepted for presentation in IEEE WCNC '1

MAC-oriented programmable terahertz PHY via graphene-based Yagi-Uda antennas

© 2018 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes,creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.Graphene is enabling a plethora of applications in a wide range of fields due to its unique electrical, mechanical, and optical properties. In the realm of wireless communications, graphene shows great promise for the implementation of miniaturized and tunable antennas in the terahertz band. These unique advantages open the door to new reconfigurable antenna structures which, in turn, enable novel communication protocols at different levels of the stack. This paper explores both aspects by, first, presenting a terahertz Yagi-Uda-like antenna concept that achieves reconfiguration both in frequency and beam direction simultaneously. Then, a programmable antenna controller design is proposed to expose the reconfigurability to the PHY and MAC layers, and several examples of its applicability are given. The performance and cost of the proposed scheme is evaluated through full-wave simulations and comparative analysis, demonstrating reconfigurability at nanosecond granularity with overheads below 0.02 mm2and 0.2 mW.Peer Reviewe

A graphene based plasmonic antenna design for communication in the THz regime

We show the first THz emission of a graphene based plasmonic antenna structure. Furthermore we present the minimum material requirements for an operational graphene antenna in terms of chemical potential µc and relaxation time t.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Material-dependencies of the THz emission from plasmonic graphene-based photoconductive antenna structures

Graphene supports surface plasmon polaritons with comparatively slow propagation velocities in the THz region, which becomes increasingly interesting for future communication technologies. This ability can be used to realize compact antennas, which are up to two orders of magnitude smaller than their metallic counterparts. For a proper functionality of these antennas some minimum material requirements have to be fulfilled, which are presently difficult to achieve, since the fabrication and transfer technologies for graphene are still evolving. In this work we analyze available graphene materials experimentally and extract intrinsic characteristics at THz frequencies, in order to predict the dependency of the THz signal emission threshold as a function of the graphene relaxation time Tr and the chemical potential µc.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Material-dependencies of the THz emission from plasmonic graphene-based photoconductive antenna structures

Graphene supports surface plasmon polaritons with comparatively slow propagation velocities in the THz region, which becomes increasingly interesting for future communication technologies. This ability can be used to realize compact antennas, which are up to two orders of magnitude smaller than their metallic counterparts. For a proper functionality of these antennas some minimum material requirements have to be fulfilled, which are presently difficult to achieve, since the fabrication and transfer technologies for graphene are still evolving. In this work we analyze available graphene materials experimentally and extract intrinsic characteristics at THz frequencies, in order to predict the dependency of the THz signal emission threshold as a function of the graphene relaxation time Tr and the chemical potential µc.Peer Reviewe

A graphene based plasmonic antenna design for communication in the THz regime

We show the first THz emission of a graphene based plasmonic antenna structure. Furthermore we present the minimum material requirements for an operational graphene antenna in terms of chemical potential µc and relaxation time t.Peer Reviewe