Outstanding low noise testbed for research on millimeterwave and THz communication system concepts of the future

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The Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) and the cooperating research institutes in the greater Erlangen-Nuremberg area like the Fraunhofer institutes IIS and IISB form one of the leading European electronics research center. The Institute for Electronics Engineering (LTE) and the Institute of Microwaves and Photonics (LHFT) at FAU, who are making this submission for funding, are core members of this association in the fields of microelectronics and microwaves, which form the backbone of communications technology. LTE and LHFT share a joint infrastructure and among their members are many outstanding senior and next generation researchers and around 90 PhD students. This application is made within the framework of the major instrumentation initiative, and its aim is to expand the infrastructure for these core research activities at FAU. More specifically, we wish to stimulate and encourage scientific investigation in the field of next generation communications with the aid of advanced measurement capabilities and carry out worldclass research in this field at FAU.This application is for funding for an “Outstanding low noise testbed for research on millimeter-wave and THz communication system concepts of the future”. The proposed major research instrumentation consists of an innovative low-noise optoelectronical microwave signal generator that exceeds the state of the art in terms of noise by a factor of 100. The instrument platform is equipped with noise-optimized quadrature frequency up- and down-converters that are not yet available on the market. These are 80-GHz bandwidth devices for different frequency bands up to 500 GHz. The installation also features a digital arbitrary waveform generator and an oscilloscope for generating and sampling the baseband signals with 80 GHz bandwidth. As such, this is an instrument platform with outstanding characteristics. It can be deployed as an analyzer for ultra-high data rate systems and subsystems along the entire transmission path and it will deliver results of an entirely new quality standard. LTE and LHFT have extensive experience and worldclass expertise in the above-mentioned fields. Their research roadmap encompass knowledge-oriented fundamental research into novel system concepts, innovative transceiver architectures and their microelectronic integration and subsystems, as well as innovative 3D-printed devices, packaging and interconnect technologies for millimeter wave and THz systems. Based on the broad perspective on a range of critical communication system aspects, we aim to develop new technologies, frequency bands and functionalities and actively pursue disruptive innovation in the field of communications technology. This requested major research instrumentation is key to our prospective research endeavors, given that systems whose characteristics clearly exceed the state of the art, can only be verified experimentally with its unique measurement capabilities.