Pulse-level beam-switching MAC with energy control in picocell Terahertz networks

Terahertz Band (0.1-10 THz) wireless communication, which escalates the frequency and provides unprecedented data rates, is envisioned as the key picocell wireless technology in the next five to ten years. In this band, the medium access control (MAC) is more about "scheduling transmissions," instead of "fighting for access," thanks to the huge bandwidth. On the one hand, an electronically steerable narrow beam is essential to overcome the high path loss at THz and extend the communication range. On the other hand, impulse radio in THz Band that generates femtosecond-long pulses enables the beam direction to be switched at the "pulse-level," in contrast to the conventional "packet-level" switching as seen in literature. To capture these features, yet keep complexity low, we assume a simple time-spread on-off-keying (TS-OOK) emitter and energy detection receiver. In this paper, we present the first MAC design to enable macro-scale communication at 100 Gbps by exploring THz Pulse-level Beam-switching with Energy control (TRPLE). For the downlink, the data rate of an arbitrary user and the network throughput are analytically investigated.