6G with Sub-THz Channel Propagation Measurements
Rohde & Schwarz actively supports research activities at 6G organizations, universities and research institutes across Europe, Asia and in the US.
The company’s test and measurement expertise and solutions help pave the way for the next generation of wireless communications 6G with commercial deployment expected around the year 2030. Sub-THz typically marks the frequency range from 100 into the 300 GHz range and represents one potential building block of a future 6G wireless communication standard.
Sub-THz technology promises to be indispensable not only to achieve target requirements in terms of maximum throughput on the 1 Tbps level and extremely low latencies. It is also the foundation for intriguing novel applications. The access to much wider bandwidths will enable very high-throughput short-range communication combined with a sense of the environment for object detection or the next generation of gesture recognition down to millimeter resolution. To fully exploit the technology’s potential, it is crucial to understand the propagation characteristics of THz frequencies by performing channel sounding measurements.
Therefore, Rohde & Schwarz has conducted a channel sounding measurement campaign performed in an urban micro scenario as well as an indoor scenario at 158 GHz and 300 GHz on the Rohde & Schwarz campus in Munich, Germany. First results of this campaign have contributed to the ITU-R Working Party 5D (W5PD) report on “Technical feasibility of IMT in bands above 100 GHz” with the objective to study and provide information on the technical feasibility of mobile cellular technologies in bands above 92 GHz (IMT meaning International Mobile Telecommunications standards). The report will be consulted at the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) World Radio Conference 2023 (WRC23), where additional frequency bands beyond 100 GHz are expected to be discussed and considered for allocation at the subsequent WRC27. The current 3GPP channel model is only validated up to 100 GHz. A crucial first step for the standardization process for 6G is to extend this channel model to higher frequencies.
