InterDigital and EPIC Successfully Demonstrate 100Gbps+ Encoder/Decoder IP Technology

Completion of EPIC project highlights substantial progress made in delivering Terahertz and wireless terabytes per second technologies for 6G

WILMINGTON, Del., March 17, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- InterDigital, Inc. (NASDAQ:IDCC), a mobile and video technology research and development company, has today announced the successful completion of the Horizon 2020 Enabling Practical Wireless Tb/s Communications with Next Generation Channel Coding (EPIC) project. A consortium of eight partners, including research and development companies, telecoms vendors and academia, EPIC has developed implementation-ready Forward Error Correction (FEC) technology in all three major code families—Turbo, LDPC and Polar—to meet the future cost and performance requirements of wireless terabytes per second (Tbps) technologies for 6G.

To support 6G’s higher data rates, a shift from GHz bands (mmWave bands) to Terahertz (THz) bands, including 100GHz spectrum and above, is required. As part of the EPIC project, InterDigital and the consortium partners successfully demonstrated high-throughput 100Gbps wireless baseband encoder and decoder technology, showcasing the substantial progress being made to deliver THz communications.

The EPIC project focused on the development of FEC algorithms, which detect and correct errors in transmitted data to improve throughput rates when encoding and decoding data. While FEC algorithms are critical to the future commercialization of THz and wireless Tbps technologies, FEC is also one of the most complex and computationally intense blocks in the digital baseband chain.

“We’re very pleased with the progress that the EPIC consortium made in the development of critical encoder and decoder technology which is helping to solve the FEC throughput challenge of 6G,” said Dr. Erdal Arikan, inventor of Polar codes and founder of Polaran Inc. “The successful project outcomes and demo with InterDigital and our EPIC peers is proof of our successful research and development efforts to enable the future of wireless technologies, beyond the current limitations we are facing with 5G.”

“The 5G we see today is only just scratching the surface in terms of delivering low latency and ultra-reliable communications. 5G was never going to happen all at once; in order to achieve true, ultra-high throughput capabilities for 6G, THz and wireless Tbps communications are key,” said Dr. Onur Sahin, Member of Technical Staff at InterDigital Europe. “FEC technology will be critical to the future commercialization of THz and wireless Tbps technologies, and our latest work on the EPIC project is playing an instrumental role in realizing the future of wireless technology. The outcome of this project is an important contribution to commercially practical THz and Tbps technologies and will add significant momentum to the development of this field.”