Toward 100 Gbps wireless networks enabled by millimeter wave Traveling Wave Tubes

New generation networks for 5G need a breakthrough to support the unstoppable increase of internet traffic. Millimeter waves offer multi-GHz bandwidth for multigigabit per second data rate. For the full exploitation of the millimeter wave spectrum, due to the high atmosphere attenuation, high transmission power is needed, not available by solid state devices. Traveling wave tubes are the only enabling devices to create ultracapacity layers to distribute data with data rate at fiber level over wide areas. This paper presents the aims of a new European Commission Horizon 2020 project, ULTRAWAVE, to create for the first time a data layer with area capacity toward 100 Gbps/km2, combining D-band and G-band internet distribution, enabled by millimeter wave traveling wave tubes.