High-Gain On-Chip Antenna Design on Silicon Layer With Aperture Excitation for Terahertz Applications

• Published in: IEEE antennas and wireless propagation letters Vol. 19; no. 9; pp. 1576 - 1580
• Main Authors: Alibakhshikenari, Mohammad, Virdee, Bal S., Khalily, Mohsen, See, Chan H., Abd-Alhameed, Raed, Falcone, Francisco, Denidni, Tayeb A., Limiti, Ernesto
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01.09.2020; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Antenna design; Antenna measurements; Antennas; Apertures; Coupling feeding mechanism; Frequency ranges; High gain; Metals; Microstrip antenna arrays; Microstrip transmission lines; Polycarbonate resins; Reflectance; Silicon; Silicon substrates; silicon technology; System-on-chip; terahertz (THz) on-chip antenna; terahertz applications; wide- frequency range
• ISSN: 1536-1225; 1548-5757
• DOI: 10.1109/LAWP.2020.3010865

This letter investigates the feasibility of designing a high gain on-chip antenna on silicon technology for subterahertz applications over a wide-frequency range. High gain is achieved by exciting the antenna using an aperture fed mechanism to couple electromagnetics energy from a metal slot line, which is sandwiched between the silicon and polycarbonate substrates, to a 15-element array comprising circular and rectangular radiation patches fabricated on the top surface of the polycarbonate layer. An open ended microstrip line, which is orthogonal to the metal slot-line, is implemented on the underside of the silicon substrate. When the open ended microstrip line is excited it couples the signal to the metal slot-line which is subsequently coupled and radiated by the patch array. Measured results show the proposed on-chip antenna exhibits a reflection coefficient of less than −10 dB across 0.290-0.316 THz with a highest gain and radiation efficiency of 11.71 dBi and 70.8%, respectively, occurred at 0.3 THz. The antenna has a narrow stopband between 0.292 and 0.294 THz. The physical size of the presented subterahertz on-chip antenna is 20 × 3.5 × 0.126 mm 3 .