Abstract-A novel design for a fully on-chip antenna operating at 140 GHz that can be fabricated with standard CMOS technology is proposed. In addition to the traditional microstrip feeding, the slot antenna is backed with an extremely thin cavity formed by two CMOS inner metal layers and vias in between. The proposed cavity prevents radiation from going inside the lossy silicon substrate and enhances the radiation of the slot antenna. It is also shown that the antenna radiation is not affected significantly by other metallic parts on the chip. Good agreement is achieved between results from a frequency-domain solver, HFSS, and a time-domain solver, CST. The simulated gain is around 2 dBi, and the radiation efficiency is around 18%, despite ohmic losses enhanced by the extreme flatness. The input 10-dB bandwidth is around 5 GHz. The total area of this antenna is 1.2 0.6 mm ( at 140 GHz).Index Terms-Cavity, CMOS, millimeter wave (MMW), on-chip antenna (OCA), passive imaging, RFIC, slot antenna.

Abstract-A novel fully on-chip antenna based on a metasurface fabricated in a 180-nm BiCMOS process is presented. Inspired by the concept of high impedance surface (HIS), this metasurface is not used as a reflector below an antenna as commonly done. Instead, it is used as a radiator by itself. The extremely thin metasurface is composed of a patterned top two metal layers and the ground plane placed in the lowest metal layer in the process. The ground plane on the lowest metal layer of the process provides a solid shielding from the substrate and other possible circuitries. The fundamental of the antenna radiation and design are described. The measured antenna shows 2.5 dBi peak broadside gain with 8-GHz 3-dB gain bandwidth and an impedance bandwidth larger than 10 GHz. In its class of broadside radiating fully on-chip antennas, with a ground plane on the lower metal layer of the process, and without additional fabrication processing, this structure achieves the widest impedance bandwidth at W-band and one of the highest gain and gain bandwidth. It is noteworthy that this is achieved with an extremely thin antenna substrate thickness and a shielding ground plane.Index Terms-Artificial magnetic conductor, high-impedance surface, leaky wave antenna, Marchand balun, millimeter wave, millimeter wave antennas, on-chip antenna.

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Abstract-High impedance surfaces (HISs) have been proposed and used as substrate for dipoles for realizing low-profile antennas. Here, we show that HISs can be used directly as low-profile antennas with a single feed point, without any dipole on top. The structure is made of only two metallic layers, the patterned surface and the ground plane below, at a subwavelength distance. We analyze two possible feeding mechanisms of an HIS made of dogbone-shaped conductors, though the ideas proposed here can be applied also to other HIS structures. We show that broadside gain of the order of 7-11 dBi can be obtained. We also explain that radiation of the HIS is in part related to a TM-like leaky wave with attenuation constant that is not as small in contrast to other standard high-gain leaky-wave antennas.Index Terms-Artificial magnetic conductor (AMC), dogbones, high impedance surface (HIS), leaky-wave antennas, low-profile antennas, planar antennas.

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