Ter­a­hertz tech­nolo­gies for vi­sion­ary in­no­va­tions in com­mu­ni­ca­tions and sen­sor tech­nol­ogy

The T-KOS project, which was launched as part of the Re­search Fab Mi­cro­elec­tron­ics Ger­many, has set it­self the task of mak­ing Ter­a­hertz tech­nol­ogy syn­er­gis­ti­cally ac­ces­si­ble for the in­dus­try for the first time in the areas of com­mu­ni­ca­tion and sen­sor tech­nol­ogy. The ap­pli­ca­tion of the in­no­v­a­tive sys­tem so­lu­tions in both areas should lead to the suc­cess­ful im­ple­men­ta­tion of fu­ture so­cial top­ics such as dig­i­tal­iza­tion, In­dus­try 4.0 or re­source ef­fi­ciency and thus con­tin­u­ously strengthen Ger­many as a busi­ness lo­ca­tion.

The use of Ter­a­hertz tech­nolo­gies pro­vides a promis­ing op­por­tu­nity for in­creas­ing data ca­pac­ity and us­able band­width, which is re­quested due to the grow­ing data vol­umes in mo­bile net­works as well as the de­mands on com­mu­ni­ca­tion net­works them­selves. Fur­ther­more, this tech­nol­ogy can be in­no­v­a­tively ap­plied in the field of non-​destructive test­ing (NDT). The Ter­a­hertz waves can pen­e­trate most of elec­tri­cally non-​conductive ma­te­ri­als, such as ce­ram­ics or plas­tics, anal­o­gous to ul­tra­sound and X-​rays. How­ever, they work with­out a cou­pling medium, do not re­quire com­plex me­chan­i­cal guid­ance or ra­di­a­tion pro­tec­tion mea­sures and do not cause any dan­ger to the human or­gan­ism.

Since May 1^st 2021, a total of nine co­op­er­a­tion part­ners of the Re­search Fab Mi­cro­elec­tron­ics Ger­many (FMD): the Fraun­hofer In­sti­tutes ENAS, HHI, FHR, IAF, IMS, IPMS and IZM as well as the Leib­niz In­sti­tutes FBH and IHP (Leib­niz In­sti­tute for high per­for­mance mi­cro­elec­tron­ics) have been work­ing to­gether with the Fraun­hofer ITWM on the project. The aim is to syn­er­gis­ti­cally de­velop Ter­a­hertz tech­nol­ogy for wire­less radio trans­mis­sion, non-​destructive mon­i­tor­ing tech­nol­ogy, spec­troscopy and non-​contact in­line mea­sure­ment tech­nol­ogy. To this end, the tech­no­log­i­cal com­pe­tences for com­mu­ni­ca­tion and sen­sor tech­nol­ogy dis­trib­uted in the FMD are com­bined and ex­panded by know-​how in the field of sig­nal pro­cess­ing.

Within the one-​year project pe­riod, dif­fer­ent demon­stra­tors will be cre­ated that ad­dress the fu­ture fields of high-​frequency elec­tron­ics, Ter­a­hertz pho­ton­ics and wire­less, high-​bit-rate com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

"The over­all project goals are to es­tab­lish a Ger­man value chain to Ter­a­hertz wire­less links, e.g. for high-​bit-rate com­mu­ni­ca­tion in in­dus­trial pro­duc­tion, in­line mon­i­tor­ing of pro­duc­tion processes with AI-​based, real-​time imag­ing pro­cess­ing for resource-​efficient pro­duc­tion, and first-​of-its-kind industrial-​grade Ter­a­hertz com­mu­ni­ca­tion and sen­sor tech­nol­ogy by com­bin­ing scal­able elec­tronic and pho­tonic con­cepts.", says Dr Dirk Nüßler, project leader and deputy di­rec­tor of Fraun­hofer FHR.

"The IHP con­tributes with in­te­grated Ter­a­hertz radar cir­cuits for non-​destructive test­ing tech­nol­ogy, de­signed and man­u­fac­tured em­ploy­ing the lat­est in-​house SiGe-​BiCMOS tech­nol­ogy. The use of these chips in fu­ture pro­duc­tion mon­i­tor­ing sys­tems al­lows a sig­nif­i­cant cost re­duc­tion com­pared to cur­rent ap­proaches and pro­vides an im­por­tant con­tri­bu­tion to Ger­many's tech­no­log­i­cal sov­er­eignty in this field," says Dr. Gunter Fis­cher from IHP.

The T-KOS project is funded by the Fed­eral Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and Re­search (BMBF) in the amount of 10 mil­lion euros (fund­ing codes 16KIS1404K, 16KIS1405 and 16KIS1406).

Fur­ther in­for­ma­tion: https://www.forschungsfabrik-​mikroelektronik.de/de/presse-​-und-medien/Presse/T-KOS.html

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