TeraHertz Band Communication: An Old Problem Revisited and Research Directions for the Next Decade

TL;DR

This paper reviews the progress and challenges of Terahertz band communication research over the past decade, highlighting achievements, open issues, and future directions to establish THz as a core technology for 6G and beyond.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive retrospective of THz communication research, identifies unresolved challenges, and proposes new research directions for the next decade.

Findings

Significant progress in device and channel modeling for THz communications

Identification of key open challenges in system integration and testing

Outlining future research directions for THz applications in 6G

Abstract

Terahertz (THz) band communications are envisioned as a key technology for 6G and Beyond. As a fundamental wireless infrastructure, THz communication can boost abundant promising applications. In 2014, our team published two comprehensive roadmaps for the development and progress of THz communication networks [1], [2], which helped the research community to start research on this subject afterwards. The topic of THz communications became very important and appealing to the research community due to 6G wireless systems design and development in recent years. Many papers are getting published covering different aspects of wireless systems using the THz band. With this paper, our aim is looking back to the last decade and revisiting the old problems and pointing out what has been achieved in the research community so far. Furthermore, in this paper, open challenges and new research directions still to be investigated for the THz band communication systems are presented, by covering diverse topics ranging from devices, channel behavior, communication and networking, to physical testbeds and demonstration systems. The key aspects presented in this paper will enable THz communications as a pillar of 6G and Beyond wireless systems in the next decade.