A Wideband Millimeter-Wave Communication and Sensing Testbed for 75-500 GHz

There is a great interest in developing millimeter- and sub-millimeter-wave systems for next-generation wireless communication and remote sensing. Necessary steps toward this goal include the comprehensive characterization of millimeter-wave wireless channels, the development of high-accuracy channel models, and the design of waveforms and associated signal processing schemes optimized for millimeter-wave channels. Commercial instruments are beginning to reach the point where such validation measurements can be made, however, it remains challenging to realize end-to-end systems that can support sub-millimeter-wave carrier frequencies and broad bandwidths simultaneously. In this paper, we present a millimeter- to sub-millimeter-wave testbed based on a 65-Gsps arbitrary waveform generator, an 80-Gsps real-time oscilloscope, and frequency multiplier-based wideband up-/down-converters. The system can generate and analyze arbitrary waveforms up to 25 GHz instantaneous bandwidth within the frequency range of 75-500 GHz. This platform enables experimental validation of proposed millimeter-wave channel models and opens the doors for novel studies in communications and sensing at millimeter- and sub-millimeter-wave frequencies involving real-world data streams and custom sensing waveforms. We also present demonstrations of the system's capabilities, including a 20 Gbit QPSK-modulated link spanning 1 meter at 410 GHz.