The institute engages in applied research and development in the fields of physics, electrical engineering and computer sciences.

The Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute develops mobile and stationary broadband communication networks and multimedia systems.

Work on the various video compression standards received the Technology and Engineering Emmy award multiple times.

Another focus is on infrared sensor systems, terahertz spectroscopy and high-performance semiconductor lasers for industrial and medical applications.

The department provides contributions to the theory and technical feasibility of radio systems and develops hardware prototypes.

The opening took place in 1930 in Berlin-Charlottenburg, Franklinstrasse 1, with four departments: High-Frequency Engineering, Telecommunications and Telegraph Technology, Acoustics and Mechanics.

The institute was reorganized in 1936 and the name Heinrich Hertz was wiped out from its designation in the course of National Socialist "cleansing" in the interest of the Third Reich.

In the 1990s research focused on the following fields: photonic networks, electronic imaging technology for multimedia, mobile broadband systems, and integrated optics.

What’s more, a breakthrough was achieved in video compression making it possible to store motion pictures in the high-resolution HDTV format with 2 million pixels per image on DVD.

On 10 November 2016 scientists of the Fraunhofer HHI established a bidirectional 1.7 Tbit/s free-space optical communications link over the air.