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Introduction to 60 GHz1
1.1 What is 60 GHz?
Since the first wireless transatlantic radio wave transmission demonstration by Marconi from Cornwall, England, to Newfoundland, Canada, in 1901 (based on long wave), wireless communications have undergone tremendous growth. They were first used mainly by military and shipping companies and later quickly expanded into commercial use such as commercial broadcasting services (such as shortwave, AM and FM radio, terrestrial TV), cellular telephony, and global positioning service (GPS), wireless local area network (WLAN), and wireless personal area network (WPAN) technologies. Today, these wireless communications systems have become an integral part of daily life and continue to evolve in providing better quality and user experience. One of the recent emerging wireless technologies is millimeter-wave (mm-wave) technology. It is important to note that mm-wave technology has been known for many decades, but has mainly been deployed for military applications. Over the past 5–6 years, advances in process technologies and low cost integration solutions have made mm-wave a technology to watch and begun to attract a great deal of interest from academia, industry and standardization bodies. In very broad terms, mm-wave technology is concerned with that part of the electromagnetic spectrum between 30 and 300 GHz, corresponding to wavelengths from 10 mm to 1 mm [1], as shown in Figure 1.1. In this book, however, we will focus ...
