Low-Loss Polytetrafluoroethylene Hexagonal Porous Fiber for Terahertz Pulse Transmission in the 6G Mobile Communication Window

Abstract

Hexagonal porous optical fiber without a central defect is proposed and numerically analyzed with the finite element method (FEM) for transmitting terahertz (THz) electromagnetic wave pulse. In experiments, the transmission characteristics of polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) hexagonal porous optical fibers were measured using a THz time-domain spectroscopy (THz-TDS) system. To precisely estimate the effective material loss (EML), we measured the refractive index and absorption coefficient of PTFE in the THz range to use them in FEM analyses, and the EML of the porous fiber was estimated to be lower than that of a bulk rod as large as by a factor of 2 in the frequency range from 0.1 to 0.33 THz. In experiments, we measured the transmission characteristics of both the porous fibers and the bulk rod, to confirm a significant improvement in THz wave transmission nearly by an order of magnitude in the 6G telecommunication window, showing a better performance than theoretical estimations.