Terabit-per-second Scale Networking: Design to Field Trials, Lab to Tower

The driving vision of this project is to break the Terabit/sec networking barrier through fundamental research, prototype designs, and proof-of-concept field trials. This project will realize the first Tb/sec transmission from a tower to four aggregated clients, each at 300 Gb/sec and 300 meters. The project will simultaneously realize the most diverse spectrum access tower ever deployed, spanning from 500 MHz to 100 GHz. This project integrates three thrusts:

  • Development and fabrication of a 10,000 element transmit and receive array at 100 GHz The first project thrust is development and fabrication of a 10,000 element transmit and receive array at 100 GHz. The key technique is a modular digital-to-impulse on chip radiating design that provides unprecedented directivity.
  • Tb/sec aggregate access to mobile clients Second, the project targets Tb/sec aggregate access to mobile clients by (1) exploiting the properties of spectrum spanning over two orders of magnitude for high-directivity sender- receiver beam alignment and (2) incrementally aggregating polarized clients to enable simultaneous transmission to multiple clients while controlling inter-stream interference.
  • Deployment of all system components on a 20 meter urban tower along with multiple client sites The final project thrust realizes deployment of all system components on a 20 meter urban tower along with multiple client sites. A key outcome will be an extensive measurement campaign of throughput and its underlying determinants in both operational and controlled testing scenarios.