GRAphene PHotonic frequency miXer (GRAPH-X)

Graph-X旨在开发一种基于石墨烯光子集成电路的新型硬件平台，用于超高速和可扩展的亚太赫兹D- (110-170 GHz)和h波段（170-240 GHz）无线链路。该技术将成为高速无线电回传链路、用于大规模MIMO的多波束形成天线、短距离高分辨率雷达传感的基本构建模块。图x的目标是在亚太赫兹可调载波频率上分布和检测多Gbit/s无线电信号。GraPh-X的主要成果将是一个单片电子和光子芯片（EPIC），它将构成下一代次太赫兹通信和雷达系统的全新光子/电子天线阵列的基本构建块。所提出的方法将允许克服当前亚太赫兹技术的技术瓶颈，例如在较高载波频率下相位噪声的有害影响增加，以及载波频率稳定性。为了实现这一目标，需要晶圆级石墨烯光子技术，并且必须超越目前的技术水平。将开发一种新技术（HMG-Stack技术），使多层石墨烯保持单层石墨烯的相同性能。GraPh-X的关键部件是一种新型光电高效频率混频器，能够混合两个光波长和高数据速率的电信号。该光子芯片将使用集成HMG-Stack作为活性材料的SiN光子平台来实现。石墨烯光子混频器与用于毫米波放大的SiGe BiCMOS电子器件的单片集成将实现高输出功率和更小的占地面积（<500x500µm2），符合毫米波天线阵列系统的单元件要求。

Graph-X aims at the development of a novel hardware platform based on graphene photonic integrated circuits for ultra-high speed and scalable sub-THz D- (110-170 GHz) and H-band (170-240 GHz) wireless links. The proposed technology will be the basic building block for high-speed radio back haul links, multi beam forming antennas for massive MIMO, short distance high resolution RADAR sensing. GraPh-X targets the distribution and detection of multi Gbit/s radio signals over sub-THz tunable carrier frequencies. The main outcome of GraPh-X will be a monolithic electronic and photonic chip (EPIC) that will constitute the basic building block of a completely new class of photonic/electronic antenna arrays for the next generation sub-THz communication and RADAR systems. The proposed approach will allow to overcome the technical bottlenecks of current sub-THz technology, such as increasing detrimental effect of phase noise at higher carrier frequencies, and carrier frequency stability. To reach the goal, the wafer scale graphene photonic technology is needed and must go beyond the state of the art. A new technique (HMG-Stack technology) will be developed to allow multi-stacking of graphene layers maintaining the same properties of single layer graphene. The key component of GraPh-X is a novel optoelectronic efficient frequency mixer able to mix two optical wavelengths and a high data rate electrical signal. The photonic chip will be realized using a SiN photonic platform that will integrate HMG-Stack as active material. The monolithic integration of the graphene photonic mixer with SiGe BiCMOS electronics for mmWave amplification will enable high output power and reduced footprint (<500x500µm2), matching the requirements of a single element of mmWave antenna array system.