Dielectric Loaded Endfire Antennas Using Standard Silicon Technology

Abstract

This paper presents two endfire on-chip antennas (OCAs) at 140 and 320 GHz using a standard 0.13-μm SiGeBiCMOS technology; quasi-Yagi antenna concept is used with loaded dielectric. In order to eliminate the influence of the low-resistivity silicon substrate, the substrate thickness is chosen as ~84 μm (for 140 GHz), and the antenna is mounted on the edge of a metal supporter with the front part ungrounded. The loaded dielectric is designed using the silicon and silicon dioxide (SiO <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> ) layers to improve the gain. The antenna shows the measured impedance bandwidth of >45% at 140 GHz, with the peak gain of 4.1 dBi, and the simulated peak radiation efficiency of 83%. A 1 × 2 array at 140 GHz is also designed and implemented; the corresponding measured impedance bandwidth, peak gain, and simulated radiation efficiency are >36%, 7 dBi, and 72%, respectively. With the proposed structure, the OCA at 320 GHz is also designed and fabricated with the substrate thickness of ~34 μm. The measured gain of 3.9 dBi and the simulated radiation efficiency of 80% are achieved at 320 GHz, respectively.