Towards Wireless Networking, Sensing, and Security in the Sub-Terahertz Regime: Design and Experiments

#6G#THz#Wireless#Communication

The spectrum above 100 GHz offers plentiful bandwidth for ultra-high-speed communication and high-resolution sensing, thereby providing a promising foundation for realizing unprecedented capabilities in next-generation wireless networks. In this talk, I will begin by presenting emerging transceiver architecture that can enable directional sub-THz steering without traditional multi-antenna arrays. I will discuss how to exploit the key characteristics of sub-THz signals and the proposed architecture for high-resolution localization. Such sensing modalities can then be exploited to enable highly directional, high data rate links that are robust to client and environmental mobility. I will address one of the main concerns with sub-THz networking which is high power consumption by introducing the first ultra-wideband retro-directive backscatter above 100 GHz.  Finally, I will discuss new security paradigms in this regime: while the conventional wisdom suggests that physical layer security improves with narrow beams, I will explain new vulnerabilities introduced by the control plane as well as emerging low-cost smart reflecting surfaces. I will conclude the talk by illustrating fundamentally new techniques for wireless authentication and security.