What are terahertz waves useful for?

Re:What are terahertz waves useful for? by cookiengineer on Saturday April 02, 2022 @07:00PM (#30892434)

From what I heard at ESA projects (not being directly involved) the L-band seems to be able to penetrate clouds and static charges in the atmosphere, whereas higher frequencies like the Ku-Band (12-18Ghz) tend to collide too much with rainy clouds and droplets in the air.

That's why I was assuming that higher frequencies than the Ku Band will likely lead to more signal degradation on the way.

I also don't have any calculations or plots in my head for the minima and maxima, so I could be totally wrong about this :D

120Ghz is quite amazing as an achievement though. They probably used a wider band and multiple channels, I would assume?

edit: looked up a little on K (18-27Ghz) and Ka band (26.5-40Ghz), but both seem to be still unfeasible for long range communications.

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Re:What are terahertz waves useful for? by mNovak on Saturday April 02, 2022 @08:03PM (#30892809)

> looked up a little on K (18-27Ghz) and Ka band (26.5-40Ghz), but both seem to be still unfeasible for long range communications

umm, Ka band is rather popular for satellite communications (very long range by most standards!). Yes things like L band are great for propagation and penetration, but the fundamental motivation for going to higher frequencies is that they can carry more data. This is the same reason you don't get music on AM radio--there's not enough bandwidth for good sound quality.

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