The steady increase of the bandwidth of new communication systems and remote sensing applications continuously improves the quality of life of many people worldwide. In fact, ultrafast electronics and high-speed communications are among the technologies with the strongest growth with capital investment of $40.3 billion in 2009 to deploy 4G networks worldwide. Yet this development also faces unsolved challenges in metrology regarding the exact measurement of amplitude and phase of continuous wave  and pulsed high-frequency signals, the uncertainty propagation between the time and frequency domain, channel and antenna characterisation, as well as exact measurements of digital signals. These deficiencies currently hinder new and progressive developments of high-frequency devices in Europe. This JRP project offers solutions to these challenges aiming at supporting the European industry to play a global lead role in ultrafast electronics and high-speed communications for both present as well as next-generation technology. In particular:

• optoelectronic measurement techniques based on femtosecond lasers will be used to establish traceability of high-speed and high-frequency measurement instrumentation to a laser-based primary standard,

• a software tool for uncertainty propagation between time and frequency domain will be developed, which can be applied to long data sets and will be available free of charge,

• antenna and channel properties in the mm- and sub-mm wave range will be characterized aiming to improve the accuracy and the available frequency range of present and future communication links,

• the traceable measurement of digital signal properties will be established including guidelines which will be disseminated to industry.

Thus, this project will help manufacturers and users of ultrafast measurement devices, but also lead to new standards and user guides. Moreover, this JRP will have impact on very different areas of modern life such as

• environment and health since the project will help to decrease transmitted power,

• finance since the project will help to reduce costs of last mile deployment,

• society since the project will help to ensure availability of information at any place and at any time.