Big News! Chinese Scientists Have Developed This Chip, the World's First!

Source: Guangming Daily

In the era of next-generation wireless communication (6G), high-speed data transmission and fast access are needed in both dense urban areas and remote mountainous regions. However, traditional wireless devices based solely on electronic technology have limited bandwidth and a single frequency band, making it difficult to dynamically schedule spectrum resources.

Professor Wang Xingjun from Peking University and Researcher Shu Haowen, along with Professor Wang Cheng from City University of Hong Kong, announced their research findings online in Nature on the evening of the 27th. They have developed the world's first adaptive full-bandwidth high-speed wireless communication chip based on optoelectronic integration technology, laying a revolutionary hardware foundation for the practical application of 6G communication technology.

A chip the size of a fingernail can efficiently manage the entire frequency spectrum, from microwaves, Sub 6 GHz to millimeter waves and even terahertz, transmitting data at over 120 Gbps, completely breaking the stalemate of "one frequency band, one device" in traditional electronic components.

"We are currently entering an era of everything connected. In the future, 6G networks will not only support applications that are extremely sensitive to bandwidth and latency, such as virtual reality and smart factories, but also achieve wide-area coverage in complex environments like densely populated remote mountains, deep sea, and space," said Wang Xingjun. Different frequency bands each have their own advantages and disadvantages: high-frequency bands have abundant data resources and extremely high speed, but are difficult to transmit over long distances; low-frequency bands have strong penetration and broad coverage, but limited capacity. Traditional wireless devices based solely on electronic technology are limited by materials and structures, often working "fixed" within a single frequency band, leading to complex systems, redundant equipment, and difficulty in dynamically scheduling spectrum resources. Truly achieving "full-bandwidth adaptive utilization" has always been a core challenge facing the industry and academia.

The research team cleverly chose the path of optoelectronic integration. They used advanced thin-film lithium niobate photonic materials to propose a new architecture called "ultra-wideband optoelectronic integrated wireless transceiver engine." The key breakthrough of this chip is the realization of an on-chip integrated optoelectronic oscillator (OEO) with widely, rapidly, and accurately reconfigurable frequencies.