On August 27, Professor Xingjun Wang and Researcher Haowen Shu’s team from our center, together with Professor Cheng Wang’s team from City University of Hong Kong, published a paper in Nature titled “Ultrabroadband on-chip photonics for full-spectrum wireless communications.”
The study introduces a universal optoelectronic wireless transceiver engine and demonstrates an ultrabroadband integrated optoelectronic chip with multi-band compatibility, real-time flexibility, and rapid reconfigurability. This breakthrough overcomes the long-standing trade-off between bandwidth, noise performance, and reconfigurability.
The achievement marks a milestone for 6G development, removing critical barriers to exploiting terahertz and higher-frequency spectrum resources. It is expected to reshape the future of wireless communications and drive China’s transition from follower to global leader in this field.
Future generations of wireless networks will focus on meeting the growing demand for ubiquitous access by dynamically and in real time leveraging the entire spectrum to support diverse application scenarios. This practical requirement imposes new challenges on the materials and technologies involved: high-frequency millimeter-wave and terahertz bands will enable higher data rates and lower latency, supporting emerging data-intensive services such as extended reality (XR) and remote surgery; meanwhile, Sub-6 GHz and microwave bands, with their lower propagation loss, will continue to provide wide-area coverage for both urban and remote regions. In addition, systems must feature real-time spectrum reconfiguration capabilities to ensure efficient utilization and stable connectivity in complex spectral environments.
However, realizing the vision of adaptive, full-spectrum, and flexible wireless communications requires a universal hardware solution that can simultaneously address multiple demands, including full-spectrum wireless signal processing, miniaturized or lightweight integration, and low-power operation. At present, conventional electronic hardware is fundamentally limited: different frequency bands rely on distinct design rules, architectures, and material systems, which restrict devices to operation within a single band and make cross-band or full-spectrum functionality nearly impossible. This disruptive technological bottleneck has challenged the industry for many years. For instance, U.S. chip giant Intel previously collaborated with Japan’s telecom operator NTT and Korea’s chipmaker SK Hynix to tackle issues such as power consumption and computational speed, while Shinko Electric (semiconductor substrate company) and Kioxia (semiconductor memory company) have also initiated research into similar technologies.
To address this challenge, the research team proposed the concept of a “universal optoelectronic wireless transceiver engine.” Based on an advanced thin-film lithium niobate photonics platform, they successfully developed an ultrabroadband optoelectronic integrated chip that enables adaptive, reconfigurable, and high-speed wireless communications with coverage beyond 110 GHz. Within an ultra-compact footprint of 11 mm × 1.7 mm, the chip integrates complete wireless signal processing functionalities — including broadband wireless-to-optical signal conversion, tunable low-noise carrier/local oscillator generation, and digital baseband modulation — achieving true system-level integration.
Building on the core chip, the team further proposed an integrated optoelectronic oscillator (OEO) architecture based on high-performance optical microring resonators. By leveraging the precise frequency selectivity of microrings to determine oscillation modes, this architecture enables the generation of low-noise carriers and local oscillator signals at arbitrary frequencies across the ultrabroadband spectrum. Compared with conventional electronic schemes based on frequency multipliers, the OEO system achieves — for the first time — real-time, flexible, and rapid reconfiguration of center frequencies ranging from 0.5 GHz to 115 GHz. Its low-noise tuning capability spans nearly eight octaves, representing a breakthrough unmatched by any existing platform or technology. Moreover, the approach fundamentally avoids the severe phase-noise degradation at high frequencies that plagues traditional frequency-multiplier chains, thereby overcoming the long-standing trade-off between bandwidth, noise performance, and reconfigurability.
Experimental validation demonstrated that the system supports wireless transmission rates exceeding 120 Gbps, meeting the peak data rate requirements of 6G communications. Crucially, thanks to the ultrabroadband characteristics of the optoelectronic integrated chip, the end-to-end wireless communication link maintained excellent performance consistency across the full spectrum, with no degradation observed in the high-frequency bands. This breakthrough removes a key barrier to unlocking terahertz and even higher-frequency spectrum resources for efficient 6G development.
Furthermore, the tunability inherent to optoelectronic integration enables real-time reconfiguration of operating frequencies. Even under passive impairments such as noise interference or multipath effects, the system can dynamically switch to secure frequency bands to ensure reliable communications. For example, in scenarios such as concerts or sports events with tens of thousands of users, traditional wireless devices often operate at fixed frequencies, leading to severe mutual interference and degraded network performance. By contrast, the new technology functions like a “broad expressway,” where base stations and mobile devices can intelligently switch across different frequency bands. Each user device effectively finds its own “dedicated lane,” freely and efficiently selecting uncongested channels for communication. This capability minimizes signal congestion and interference, dramatically improving both the quality and efficiency of wireless communications.
This discovery presents a solution for full-spectrum reconfiguration, paving the way for more flexible and intelligent AI-driven wireless networks and reshaping the future landscape of wireless communications. Not only can the system, based on the concept of being “AI-native,” incorporate AI algorithms to dynamically adapt hardware parameters to complex and rapidly changing communication environments, but it can also be applied to joint communication and sensing scenarios. By embedding linear frequency-modulated signals, the system can simultaneously achieve real-time data transmission and precise environmental sensing. Moreover, this approach is expected to generate a significant ripple effect across the industry chain, particularly by injecting new momentum into the innovation of key devices such as broadband reconfigurable antennas.
Looking ahead, the research team will focus on further improving system integration, with the goal of achieving monolithic integration of lasers, photodetectors, and antennas, ultimately enabling plug-and-play intelligent wireless communication modules adaptable to any system. The team envisions this research becoming a technological engine for the next generation of wireless communication revolution, driving coordinated innovation across the industrial ecosystem and supporting China’s leap from follower to global leader in this field.
Dr. Zihan Tao (Postdoctoral Fellow, School of Electronics, Peking University), Haoyu Wang (Ph.D. student, School of Integrated Circuits, Peking University), Dr. Hanke Feng (Research Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering, City University of Hong Kong), Yijun Guo (Ph.D. student, School of Electronics, Peking University), and Dr. Bitao Shen (Postdoctoral Fellow, School of Electronics, Peking University) are co-first authors of the paper. Professor Xingjun Wang (School of Electronics, Peking University), Professor Cheng Wang (Department of Electrical Engineering, City University of Hong Kong), and Researcher Haowen Shu (School of Electronics, Peking University) are the co-corresponding authors. Important contributions were also made by Dr. Dan Sun (Assistant Researcher, Yangtze Delta Institute of Optoelectronics, Peking University), Dr. Yuansheng Tao (Postdoctoral Fellow, City University of Hong Kong), and Researcher Yandong He (School of Integrated Circuits, Peking University), among others.
This research was supported by the Youth Scientist Project of the National Key R&D Program of the Ministry of Science and Technology, the NSFC Student Basic Research Program for Young Scholars, NSFC Key Projects, the National Major Scientific Instrument Development Program, the NSFC Young Scientist Fund (Category B and C), as well as the Hong Kong RGC General Research Fund, Early Career Scheme, and the Croucher Foundation. Notably, Dr. Zihan Tao, the first author of the paper, received support from the first batch of NSFC Student Basic Research Projects for Young Scholars under the project “Integrated Microwave Photonic RF Front-End Chips for 6G Full-Spectrum Access.” This project provided critical support for the development of the research work reported in this paper.
Original Article：Ultrabroadband on-chip photonics for full-spectrum wireless communications | Nature
