The researchers circumvented this by creating a terahertz signal that follows a curved trajectory around an obstacle, instead of being blocked by it.

“This is the world’s first curved data link, a critical milestone in realizing the 6G vision of high data rate and high reliability," said Edward Knightly, a co-author on the study and professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rice University.

The novel method unveiled in the study could help revolutionize wireless communication and highlights the future feasibility of wireless data networks that run on terahertz frequencies, according to the researchers.

“We want more data per second,” Mittleman said. “If you want to do that, you need more bandwidth, and that bandwidth simply doesn't exist using conventional frequency bands.”

In the study, Mittleman and his colleagues introduce the concept of self-accelerating beams. The beams are special configurations of electromagnetic waves that naturally bend or curve to one side as they move through space. The beams have been studied at optical frequencies but are now explored for terahertz communication.

The researchers used this idea as a jumping off point. They engineered transmitters with carefully designed patterns so that the system can manipulate the strength, intensity and timing of the electromagnetic waves that are produced. With this ability to manipulate the light, the researchers make the waves work together more effectively to maintain the signal when a solid object blocks a portion of the beam. Essentially, the light beam adjusts to the blockage by shuffling data along the patterns the researchers engineered into the transmitter. When one pattern is blocked, the data transfers to the next one, and then the next one if that is blocked. This keeps the signal link fully intact. Without this level of control, when the beam is blocked, the system can’t make any adjustments, so no signal gets through.

This effectively makes the signal bend around objects as long as the transmitter is not completely blocked. If it is completely blocked, another way of getting the data to the receiver will be needed.

“Curving a beam doesn’t solve all possible blockage problems, but what it does is solve some of them and it solves them in a way that's better than what others have tried,” said Hichem Guerboukha, who led the study as a postdoctoral researcher at Brown and is now an assistant professor at the University of Missouri – Kansas City.

The researchers validated their findings through extensive simulations and experiments navigating around obstacles to maintain communication links with high reliability and integrity. The work builds on a previous study from the team that showed terahertz data links can be bounced off walls in a room without dropping too much data.

By using these curved beams, the researchers hope to one day make wireless networks more reliable, even in crowded or obstructed environments. This could lead to faster and more stable internet connections in places like offices or cities where obstacles are common. Before getting to that point, however, there’s much more basic research to be done and plenty of challenges to overcome as terahertz communication technology is still in its infancy.

“One of the key questions that everybody asks us is how much can you curve and how far away,” Mittleman said. “We've done rough estimations of these things, but we haven't really quantified it yet, so we hope to map it out.”

The work was supported by the National Science Foundation and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.