Sub-THz wireless transmission based on graphene integrated optoelectronic mixer

Optoelectronics is a valuable solution to scale up wireless links frequency to sub-THz in the next generation antenna systems and networks. We propose an innovative, low-power consumption, small footprint building block for 5G and 6G new radio wireless transmission allowing broadband capacity (e.g., 10–100 Gb/s per link and beyond). We pioneer the first wireless datalink based on graphene, reaching setup limited sub-THz carrier frequency and multi-Gbit/s data rate using a graphene-based integrated optoelectronic mixer capable of mixing an optically generated ~ 100 GHz reference oscillator with a baseband electrical signal. We report > 96GHz optoelectronic bandwidth and − 44 dB upconversion efficiency with a footprint significantly smaller than those of state-of-the-art photonic transmitters (i.e., 2). This paves the way to the development of novel arrayed-antennas for millimeter-wave technology relying on a new approach which takes advantage of optics. These results have been achieved thanks to an integrated-photonic technology based on wafer-scale high-mobility graphene.