Impacts of Phase Noise on M-ary QAM THz Wireless Communications

TL;DR

This paper analyzes how phase noise affects M-ary QAM THz wireless systems, revealing phase error impacts, modulation tolerance, and highlighting microcomb-driven schemes for error resilience.

Contribution

It models phase noise impacts on THz M-QAM systems, introduces a correlation between phase errors and EVM, and identifies microcomb-driven schemes as promising for resilient THz links.

Findings

Phase noise causes specific constellation distortions.

Microcomb-driven schemes show high potential for error resilience.

A linear correlation between phase errors and EVM is established.

Abstract

THz technology is positioned as a key enabler for next-generation wireless links due to the extensive untapped bandwidth and inherent compatibility with silicon photonics. Here, the phase noise of THz sources is modeled to characterized its impacts on a QAM-based wireless communication system. Particularly, common and instantaneous phase errors are unveiled and presented via constellation diagrams. In addition, tolerance of phase noise under different M-ary modulation formats is explored. Meanwhile, a linear correlation between instantaneous component and EVM is revealed to define the error-free boundary, where microcomb-driven scheme is highlighted as a highly promising candidate for error-resilient THz links under advanced M-QAM formats. The results intuitively illustrate the impacts of phase noise and offer practical insights for refining technical details on physical-layer protocols.