Optimization of the trade-off between spectral efficiency and energy efficiency in the sub-terahertz context

To answer to future challenges of communications, applications will need more bandwidth, more throughput, lower latency, seamless connectivity, as well as improved spectral and energy efficiencies, etc. One of the solutions considered by the community is the use of sub-THz bands (0.1 THz to 10 THz). However, communicating at such high frequencies has a cost, such as lower range and high energy consumption. In this paper, we are interested in jointly optimizing energy consumption and spectral efficiency while keeping in mind the baseband units' energy consumption. Numerical analysis shows that there is an optimal trade-off between energy consumption and spectral efficiency that yields the lowest energy consumption while meeting the qualities of service (QoS) of sub-THz communications. Particular attention is thus paid on the evaluation of the impact of certain system parameters such as transmission distance, power consumption of baseband units and bandwidth on the optimal energy consumption and spectral efficiency metrics.