An Open-Source Hardware-Aware Sub-THz Radio-Stripe Simulator

TL;DR

This paper introduces an open-source simulator for sub-THz radio-stripe systems, modeling the entire signal chain and hardware impairments for performance analysis.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive, configurable waveform-level simulation tool incorporating fiber links, hardware impairments, and channel models for sub-THz radio architectures.

Findings

Supports detailed hardware impairment modeling

Enables performance evaluation with system metrics

Integrates ray-tracing for realistic propagation scenarios

Abstract

Sub-Terahertz radio-stripe and distributed MIMO architectures promise extreme spatial reuse and multi-GHz bandwidths, but the cascaded fiber front-haul and RF hardware impairments strongly shape end-to-end performance. This paper presents an open-source, configuration-driven simulator that models the full waveform-level signal chain from CP-OFDM baseband generation in the central unit, through measurement-parameterized polymer microwave fiber and coupler links, to booster/active Radio Units (RUs) with configurable nonlinearity, noise, in-phase and quadrature imbalance, and oscillator phase noise and carrier frequency offset. Wireless propagation is supported via lightweight deterministic and stochastic per-subcarrier channel models as well as site-specific ray-tracing datasets generated with a companion Sionna ray-tracer module. The simulator exports intermediate waveforms and system metrics (e.g., normalised mean square error, signal-to-noise-and-distortion ratio, bit error rate) to enable reproducible studies of impairment accumulation, calibration, and algorithmic choices such as RU selection and beam management.