A Modular COTS-Based High-Efficient Sub-THz Channel Sounder and Experimental Validations

The prospect of offering huge amounts of available bandwidth to achieve extremely high data rates makes sub-terahertz (sub-THz) communication seen as a key enabler for 6G use cases requiring extreme throughputs on the order of 10s or 100s of Gbps. The design and planning of wireless communication systems are affected by the radio channels in which they will operate. Physical modeling of sub-THz channels requires sufficient channel-sounding data collected across multiple frequency bands and environments for statistical analysis. In this paper, we present a modular correlation-based sub-THz channel sounder using commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) instruments. It can be easily scaled for multi-band channel measurements by using different frequency extenders while sharing the same baseband units. The validation measurements at 150 GHz are conducted in an indoor corridor using the proposed sounder, together with the ray-tracing simulation results for performance validations in identical settings.