Differential bondwire interface for chip-to-chip and chip-to-antenna interconnect above 200 GHz

Abstract

This paper investigates a novel differential transition using bond wires for chip-to-chip and chip-to-antenna connections for systems operating above 200 GHz. At mm-wave frequencies, the bond-wire interface can be modeled as a transmission line tuned to match the system impedance removing the need for matching or compensation. The interface is aimed at providing design and measurement flexibility for a transmitter system operating around 245 GHz. It is characterized by using on-chip Marchand BALUNs to measure the system and the transition itself. It achieves a worst case loss of −6 dB covering the full WR-3.4 band which is competitive to the state of the art. To the best of the author's knowledge, this is the first publication of a differential bond wire transition operating above 200 GHz.