The newly launched EU-funded GRAPH-X project has big plans for 2023
GRAPH-X – or ‘GRAphene PHotonic frequency miXer’ – is a project that seeks to develop a complete hardware platform based on graphene photonic integrated circuits. The project officially began on 1 October 2022 from an administrative perspective, but it is this year, in 2023, that we can expect to see the project’s first exciting results.
As discussed in GRAPH-X’s kick-off meeting in late 2022, the project shows promise not only from a pure research perspective, but also in the context of applications.
Applications of GRAPH-X’s hardware platform will include next generation 6G technology and ultra-high speed and scalable sub-THz (110 – 170GHz and 170-240GHz) wireless links. More specifically, this means GRAPH-X has the potential to contribute to areas ranging from communication systems to smart cities, to food inspection practices, to medical imaging, to automotive safety.
The proposed technology will also be the basic building block for high-speed radio back haul links, multi beam forming antennas for massive MIMO, and short distance high resolution RADAR sensing.
To address the distribution and detection of multi Gbit/s radio signals over sub-THz tunable carrier frequencies, GRAPH-X will employ an innovative approach based on graphene integrated photonics (GIP) as enabling technology. It is anticipated that this approach will enable the proposed technology to overcome current technical bottlenecks such as high phase noise and carrier frequency stability and tunability, which limit the sub-THz wireless communication technologies.
Dr Vito Sorianello, coordinator of GRAPH-X and researcher at Italy’s National Interuniversity Telecommunications Consortium (CNIT), is enthusiastic about the project’s potential to make a meaningful and positive impact across a variety of fields.
“Photonics’ applications are incredibly widespread, which makes photonics research a rewarding field in which to work – real-world impact is never far away,” said Dr Sorianello.
“GRAPH-X is also an especially exciting project for how it seeks to make use of graphene’s unique properties in the photonics sphere. Graphene research has grown substantially throughout Europe over the past decade in particular, thanks in part to landmark research initiatives like the Graphene Flagship, which means there has rarely been a better time for doing this kind of research in Europe.”
The GRAPH-X consortium partners expect to publish preliminary research findings shortly. Consortium partners include:
- 4 research institutes: Consorzio Nazionale Interuniversitario per le Telecomunicazioni (CNIT – Italy); Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT – Italy); Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS – France); Leibniz Institute for High Performance Microelectronics (IHP – Germany);
- 1 university: University of Cambridge (UCAM – UK);
- 1 SME: Camgraphic srl (CMG – Italy)
- 2 large companies: Nokia Solutions and Networks (NSN IT – Italy); Veoneer (VEO – Sweden).