National Radio Dynamic Zones to Support Wireless Research above 100 GHz

Moving to frequencies beyond 100 GHz for wireless communication is seen as a necessity to accommodate the tremendously growing number of wirelessly connected devices and especially to cope with the ever- increasing demand for higher wireless data rates, which are expected to reach the 1 Terabit-per-second (Tbps) mark within the next five years. Many efforts have already been made and are in progress both within the USA (e.g., multiple NSF and DoD-funded efforts as well as the industry-led SRC ComSenTer Center) and outside the USA (e.g., the European Commission’s H2020 ICT-09 Terahertz Project Cluster or the Broadband Communications and New Networks program by the Chinese National Science Founda- tion), all aimed at exploring the absorption-defined transmission windows above 100 GHz for ultrabroad- band wireless communications. As a result, the establishment of a National Radio Dynamic Zone (NRDZ) that enables experiments, especially outdoors, at frequencies above 100 GHz is seen as a key necessary step to bolster and accelerate the ongoing research. Particularly, although the frequencies beyond 100 GHz have mostly remained uncharted for the wireless communication community, they are already being exten- sively utilized in space/earth exploration and sensing. Thus, the need to protect the passive incumbent users in these bands makes the definition of an NRDZ particularly critical.

The objective of this supplement is to explore the feasibility of establishing an NRDZ for the testing of new wireless communication technologies at frequencies above 100 GHz. The primary focus will be on the frequencies between 100 GHz and 300 GHz, which can be thought of as the high mm-wave (h- mmWave) or sub-THz band. The expected outcome of this work is a set of guidelines and required practices to ensure that devices within the NRDZ do not interfere with neither active nor passive services outside the NRDZ. Such guidelines will include tolerable transmission power limits for different antenna gains and patterns and different atmospheric conditions. Funds are requested to i) deploy the THz communication testbed already available to the team both in a fully-controlled anechoic-chamber environ- ment as well as outdoors, ii) collect extensive experimental data (power measurements and physical layer traces) to validate and refine the team-developed propagation models, and iii) develop the aforementioned required practices for an NRDZ above 100 GHz, ensuring passive-active coexistence with spectrum effi- ciency maximization. The original grant accounts for propagation modeling and physical and link layer de- sign solutions for the intended active users only. This supplement will provide the funds to perform the characterization from the unintended active and passive user services perspective, who might be impacted by the activity within the NRDZ if the “to-be-determined” best practices are not in place.

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