Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Rice University, 6100 Main St., Houston, TX, 77005, USA.
School of Engineering, Brown University, 184 Hope St., Providence, RI, 02912, USA.
Nat Commun. 2020 Apr 24;11(1):2017. doi: 10.1038/s41467-020-15761-4.
Of the many challenges in building a wireless network at terahertz frequencies, link discovery remains one of the most critical and least explored. In a network of mobile receivers using narrow directional beams, how do the nodes rapidly locate each other? This direction information is crucial for beam forming and steering, which are fundamental operations for maintaining link quality. As the carrier frequency increases into the terahertz range, the conventional methods used by existing networks become prohibitively time-consuming, so an alternative strategy is required. Using a leaky-wave antenna with a broadband transmitter, we demonstrate a single-shot approach for link discovery which can be accomplished much more rapidly. Our method relies on measurements of the width of a broad spectrum, and does not require any information about the phase of the received signal. This protocol, which relies on a detailed understanding of the radiation from leaky-wave devices, offers a realistic approach for enabling mobility in directional networks.
在太赫兹频率下构建无线网络面临许多挑战，链路发现仍然是最关键但研究最少的挑战之一。在使用窄定向波束的移动接收器网络中，节点如何快速找到彼此？这个方向信息对于波束形成和转向至关重要，这是保持链路质量的基本操作。随着载波频率增加到太赫兹范围，现有网络使用的传统方法变得非常耗时，因此需要一种替代策略。我们使用具有宽带发射器的漏波天线展示了一种可以更快完成的单次链路发现方法。我们的方法依赖于宽带信号的宽度测量，不需要接收信号相位的任何信息。该协议依赖于对漏波器件辐射的详细理解，为实现定向网络中的移动性提供了一种现实的方法。
