MAC-Oriented Programmable Terahertz PHY via Graphene-based Yagi-Uda Antennas

TL;DR

This paper introduces a graphene-based, reconfigurable terahertz Yagi-Uda antenna with programmable control, enabling dynamic frequency and beam direction adjustments for advanced wireless communication protocols.

Contribution

It presents a novel graphene-based Yagi-Uda antenna concept with integrated programmable control for reconfigurable terahertz wireless communication.

Findings

Achieves nanosecond reconfiguration granularity

Demonstrates low overheads in size and power consumption

Validates performance through full-wave simulations

Abstract

Graphene is enabling a plethora of applications in a wide range of fields due to its unique electrical, mechanical, and optical properties. In the realm of wireless communications, graphene shows great promise for the implementation of miniaturized and tunable antennas in the terahertz band. These unique advantages open the door to new reconfigurable antenna structures which, in turn, enable novel communication protocols at different levels of the stack. This paper explores both aspects by, first, presenting a terahertz Yagi-Uda-like antenna concept that achieves reconfiguration both in frequency and beam direction simultaneously. Then, a programmable antenna controller design is proposed to expose the reconfigurability to the PHY and MAC layers, and several examples of its applicability are given. The performance and cost of the proposed scheme is evaluated through full-wave simulations and comparative analysis, demonstrating reconfigurability at nanosecond granularity with overheads below 0.02 mm$^{2}$ and 0.2 mW.