Quantifying Phase Noise Tolerance for Single-Carrier M-QAM Terahertz Wireless Communications with Advantages of Photonic Approaches

Abstract

Terahertz wireless communications offer abundant untapped spectrum and are regarded as a promising playground for next-generation high-throughput links. Yet oscillator phase noise becomes the dominant impairment at such high frequencies, severely limiting the reliability of high-order QAM transmission. While photonic approaches, such as microcombs, are known to realize ultralow phase noise, the quantitative level of suppression required to sustain reliable high-order QAM transmission has not been clarified. Here, phase noise is reconstructed from measured spectra and embedded into a single-carrier link model to evaluate its impact. Distinct distortion mechanisms are identified, with slow common phase error and instantaneous phase jitter, where the latter remains as the residual impairment after carrier phase recovery. We further adopt the 3{\sigma} error criterion, which maps residual distortions onto the constellation, providing a clear and practical indicator of system robustness. The results indicate that modest improvements in oscillator stability translate into significant BER gains without proportional power increase. These findings provide intuitive tolerance of phase noise in M-QAM systems and emphasize the importance of integrating low-noise photonic oscillators such as microcombs.