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DLINK - D-band Wireless Link With Fibre Data Rate

Project: Research

Description

The DLINK project aims to bring the UK at the forefront of millimetre wave wireless technology through the realisation of the first high capacity link at D-band with unprecedented performance, to provide 45Gb/s, over 1 km range, and with 99.99% availability in ITU rain zone K (typical of UK and Europe). The DLINK system includes a high power vacuum traveling wave tube (TWT) of new generation driven by a novel resonant tunnelling diode (RTD) transmitter with an integrated vector modulator. The system will be demonstrated in Frequency Division Duplex (FDD), with two bands of 10 GHz each to provide about 45 Gb/s data rate. The high performance of DLINK is enabled by traveling wave tubes as amplifiers, with about 10W output power, which is more than one order of magnitude than solid state amplifiers at the same frequency. The TWT working mechanism is based on the transfer of energy from a high energy electron beam, flowing in a waveguide with high level of vacuum, to the electric field generated by the input signal. No D-band TWTs are available in the market. Substantial challenges must be solved for an affordable microfabrication of mm-wave waveguides, due to small dimensions and three dimensional shapes. The transmitter will be an RTD oscillator with very low phase noise to support QAM modulation generated by an on-chip PIN diode vector modulator. The DLINK system includes two transmitters, one for each FDD channel, integrating a RTD oscillator/transmitter, a TWT and an antenna. For the first time, the property of a transmission link with 20 GHz bandwidth above 100 GHz will be investigated by field tests at BT.
StatusFinished
Effective start/end date1/01/19 → 31/12/22
Linkshttp://wp.lancs.ac.uk/dlink/

Funding

  • Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council: £424,774.25
  • Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council: £7,137.17

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Activities

Facilities/Equipment

  • Vector network analyser

    Facility/Equipment: Equipment

  • ZVA Vector Network Analyser (VNA)

    Facility/Equipment: Equipment

  • CNC milling machine

    Facility/Equipment: Equipment

Research outputs