Telecom technology based continuous wave terahertz photomixing system with 105 decibel signal-to-noise ratio and 3.5 terahertz bandwidth.

A modified photoconductive receiver significantly improves the performance of photomixing-based continuous wave (cw) THz systems driven at the optical telecommunication wavelength of 1.5 μm. The achieved signal-to-noise ratio of 105 dB at 100 GHz and 70 dB at 1 THz, both for an integration time of 200 ms, are to our knowledge the highest numbers reported in literature for any optoelectronic cw THz system, including classical setups operating at 800 nm. The developed receiver allows for combining low cost and high performance in one system for the first time to our knowledge.