60 Gbit/s PAM-4 wireless transmission in the 310 GHz band with nonlinearity tolerant signal processing

Abstract We experimentally demonstrate a terahertz (THz) photonic wireless transmission system in the 310 GHz band with four-level pulse amplitude modulation (PAM-4) signals. A zero-bias diode is used as a simple direct detection receiver, which is cost-effective compared to a conventional coherent receiver. Moreover, we comprehensively investigate the system performance by applying linear and nonlinear equalization schemes. The experimental results show that Volterra nonlinear filtering can significantly improve the system capacity by around 90%, and transmissions of up to 60 Gbit/s PAM-4 signals over a 3 m wireless link are successfully achieved. The advantageous features of this make it promising for high-speed THz wireless communications.