Opening Terahertz for Everyday Applications

CMOS IC technology has become an affordable means for implementing capable systems operating at 300 GHz and above. CMOS circuits have been used to generate a signal up to 1.3 THz to detect both amplitude and phase of signals up to 1.2 THz, and to detect a signal amplitude up to ~10 THz. Additionally, a transmitter and a receiver operating up to ~300 GHz for electronic smelling using rotational spectroscopy, a 30-Gb/s 300-GHz QPSK transmitter for data communication with -6-dBm output power, and an 820 GHz imaging array fabricated in CMOS have been reported. These results, along with the CMOS circuit performance in the literature, and link analyses suggest that the electronics necessary for everyday life applications in the terahertz band can be affordably realized.