EXPERIMENTAL COMPARISON OF TERAHERTZ AND INFRARED SIGNALING IN CONTROLLED ATMOSPHERIC TURBULENCE

In order to study and compare propagation features of Terahertz (THz) and infrared (IR) links under different air turbulence conditions, THz and IR freespace communication links at 625 GHz carrier frequency and 1550 nm wavelength, respectively, with a maximum data rate of 2.5 Gb/s have been developed. After propagating through the same channel perturbation caused byair turbulence, attenuation of the channels due to scintillation effects is analyzed by measuring the power and bit-error-rates in each link. Attenuation caused byair turbulence degrades the IR channel but exhibits only minor impact on the THz signal. Numerical simulations of the IR and THz attenuation under differentturbulence conditions are presented and compared with the experimental data.