Terahertz Communications: Present and Future

A special issue of Applied Sciences (ISSN 2076-3417). This special issue belongs to the section "Electrical, Electronics and Communications Engineering".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 December 2019) | Viewed by 6015

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Department of Electrical and Information Engineering, Politecnico di Bari, Via Edoardo Orabona, 4, 70126 Bari BA, Italy
Interests: nano-networks; secure Internet of Things and Industry 4.0; 5G systems; data-centric and programmable architectures for the Future Internet; Internet models and network measurements
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Guest Editor
School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Road, London E1 4NS, UK
Interests: basics of antennae and electromagnetism, from megastructures and metasurfaces to novel applications in telerobotics, cognitive radio, wearable electronics, nanoscale networks, healthcare, and bioengineering
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

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Guest Editor
James Watt School of Engineering, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK
Interests: nano communication; biomedical applications of millimeter and terahertz communication; wearable and flexible sensors; compact antenna design; RF design and radio propagation; antenna interaction with human body; implants; body centric wireless communication issues; wireless body sensor networks; non-invasive health care solutions; physical layer security for wearable/implant communication and multiple-input–multiple-output systems
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Today, the innovation process triggered by nanotechnologies is fostering the development of integrated devices with sizes ranging from one to a few hundred nanometers, very well-suited for ICT, biomedical, industrial, and military applications. Also, the scientific literature has demonstrated that communication at the nanoscale is feasible due to the adoption of graphene-based nano-antennas generating electromagnetic waves in the terahertz band (i.e., from 0.1 THz to 10 THz). Accordingly, researchers from both academia and industry have formulated and, in some cases, developed, pioneering nanoscale communication systems. The current state of the art provides fundamental results that will drive future research activities in this direction.

This Special Issue intends to collect high-level scientific contributions focusing on present achievements and future goals in the terahertz communication domain. Specifically, the topics of interest include:

  • THz antennas including carbon nanotubes and graphene-based designs
  • THz communication links modelling and characterisation 
  • Theoretical limitations and considerations of electromagnetic waves at THz
  • THz radar and sensing devices and solutions
  • THz tissue characterisation and sensing for biomedical applications 
  • THz material characterisation and synthesis
  • Advanced physical transmission techniques for THz
  • Nanoscale devices and networks at THz
  • Nanoscale network architecture at THz
  • Communication protocols for nanoscale networks
  • Experimental testbeds and reference use cases based on THz communications

Dr. Giuseppe Piro
Dr. Akram Alomainy
Dr. Qammer H. Abbasi
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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10 pages, 2348 KiB  
Article
Characterization and Water Content Estimation Method of Living Plant Leaves Using Terahertz Waves
by Adnan Zahid, Hasan T. Abbas, Muhammad A. Imran, Khalid A. Qaraqe, Akram Alomainy, David R. S. Cumming and Qammer H. Abbasi
Appl. Sci. 2019, 9(14), 2781; https://doi.org/10.3390/app9142781 - 10 Jul 2019
Cited by 25 | Viewed by 5168
Abstract
An increasing global aridification due to climate change has made the health monitoring of vegetation indispensable to maintaining the food supply chain. Cost-effective and smart irrigation systems are required not only to ensure the efficient distribution of water, but also to track the [...] Read more.
An increasing global aridification due to climate change has made the health monitoring of vegetation indispensable to maintaining the food supply chain. Cost-effective and smart irrigation systems are required not only to ensure the efficient distribution of water, but also to track the moisture of plant leaves, which is an important marker of the overall health of the plant. This paper presents a novel electromagnetic method to monitor the water content (WC) and characterisation in plant leaves using the absorption spectra of water molecules in the terahertz (THz) frequency for four consecutive days. We extracted the material properties of leaves of eight types of pot herbs from the scattering parameters, measured using a material characterisation kit in the frequency range of 0.75 to 1.1 THz. From the computed permittivity, it is deduced that the leaf specimens increasingly become transparent to the THz waves as they dry out with the passage of days. Moreover, the loss in weight and thickness of leaves were observed due to the natural evaporation of leaf moisture cells and change occurred in the morphology of fresh and water-stressed leaves. It is also illustrated that loss observed in WC on day 1 was in the range of 5% to 22%, and increased from 83.12% to 99.33% on day 4. Furthermore, we observed an exponential decaying trend in the peaks of the real part of the permittivity from day 1 to 4, which was reminiscent of the trend observed in the weight of all leaves. Thus, results in paper demonstrated that timely detection of water stress in leaves can help to take proactive action in relation to plants health monitoring, and for precision agriculture applications, which is of high importance to improve the overall productivity. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Terahertz Communications: Present and Future)
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