Since the recent standardisation of THz communications in the 300 GHz band, system-level development has become an integral part of recent laboratory and outdoor demonstrations of THz transmission systems, for high-speed point-to-point link application scenarios. Among the new capabilities offered by the THz spectrum, the aggregation of existing E-band channels (71-76 and 81-86 GHz) is an interesting way of increasing the capacity of existing systems. Recently, as part of the joint EU-Japan Horizon 2020 ThoR project, the first two-way demonstrator at 300 GHz was built and successfully tested in free space. This demonstrator used industrial E-band telecommunications modems (for network connectivity and baseband signal processing), THz front-ends using high mobility metamorphic transistors (mHEMTs) and a photonic solution to generate low phase noise local oscillators (LOs)’. The ThoR system, a net data rate of 2 x 20 Gbit/s over a distance of 150 m using a total instantaneous bandwidth of 8.64 GHz has been demonstrated, in compliance with IEEE Std 802.15.3-2023. [1]

Although this demonstrator was designed for fixed THz links, the transmit/receive circuits are now being used as the basis for research into new use cases for THz connectivity. In this case, use scenarios such as smart factories include mobile THz receivers (self-propelled robots). To achieve this, the communication aspect needs to be coupled with the ‘sensing’ aspect, which involves detecting the position of the receivers in real time in order to adjust the THz channel. These systems are known as ‘ISAC’ systems, for Integrated Sensing and Communications.

As an example, the European Horizon Europe TIMES project (‘THz Industrial Mesh Networks in Smart Sensing and Propagation Environments’), carried out as part of the European 6G-SNS programme, is building on the technological building blocks of ThoR to demonstrate new THz links in industrial environments [2]. In these new scenarios, the use of intelligent reflective and reconfigurable surfaces (RIS) could pave the way for dynamic channels in the THz range.