Science Daily April 9, 2024
A key challenge in millimeter-wave and terahertz wireless networks is blockage of the line-of-sight path between a base station and a user. A team of engineers in the US (University of Missouri-Kansas City, Rice University, Brown University) proposed a solution to this problem leveraging the fact that, in such scenarios, users are likely to be located within the electromagnetic near field of the base station, which opens the possibility to engineer wave fronts for link maintenance. They showed that curved beams, carrying data at high bit rates, could realize a link by curving around an intervening obstacle. They developed a model to analyze and experimentally evaluate the bandwidth limitations imposed using self-accelerating beams demonstrating that such links employed the full aperture of the transmitter, even those portions which have no direct line of sight to the receiver. According to the researchers their solution is suited for use at millimeter-wave and terahertz frequencies, and opens new possibilities for wave front management in directional wireless networks… read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Experimental realization of THz accelerating beams… Credit: Communications Engineering volume 3, Article number: 58 (2024)