Turning THz Communications into Reality : Status on Technology, Standardization and Regulation

Already a couple of years ago THz communications have not only become an attractive new research area on channel modeling but also triggered a couple of projects heading to develop appropriate technological solutions to enable the set-up of hardware demonstrators. Also discussions and activities in standardization and regulation already took off. In October 2017, IEEE published Std. IEEE 802.15.3d-2017 the worldwide first wireless communications standard operating in the 300 GHz frequency band. In parallel to the standardization process activities at the ITU-R level targeting on the provision of an appropriate regulatory framework at the World Radio Conference 2019 (WRC-2019) via a dedicated agenda item have taken off. This paper provides a brief overview on the current status of the development of THz Communication systems focusing on recent results on advanced channel characterization at 300 GHz, hardware demonstrators operating in this frequency range, the past and current activities at IEEE 802 and the WRC 2019 preparations.