An integrated traveling-wave slot radiator

Abstract

A traveling-wave integrated slot radiator is designed using electromagnetic duality theory based off of the ring portion of a radial multi-port driven radiator to minimize the area required exclusively for the antenna. It is designed in 32 nm SOI CMOS and driven by a buffered quadrature VCO at 4 points to create the traveling wave that radiates out of the backside of the chip. It is measured to have a maximum EIRP of 6.0 dBm at 134.5 GHz with a total radiated power of -1.7 dBm while drawing 168 mW DC power.

Slot-ring multiport driven antenna with improved airside radiation for terahertz communications

“…A slot-ring antenna for 135 GHz operation on a 250 µm silicon substrate, (0.41λ) was presented in [8]. The effects of electrically thick susbstrate (≥ 0.41λ) on the slot-ring antenna are yet to be established and are investigated in this paper with the aim of establishing how much of an effect they have on the performance of the slot-ring MPD.…”

“…A design challenge with the ring MPD antenna is to route the tracks to the driven points along the ring. A complementary structure of the loop antenna is a slot-ring and is presented in [8] which features integrated sources at desired points along the slot-ring. The slot-ring MPD in [8] was designed for backside radiation without the use of lenses due to the high dielectric constant of the substrate.…”

“…A complementary structure of the loop antenna is a slot-ring and is presented in [8] which features integrated sources at desired points along the slot-ring. The slot-ring MPD in [8] was designed for backside radiation without the use of lenses due to the high dielectric constant of the substrate. The slot-ring is particularly interesting due to the relatively less complicated fabrication compared to the ring MPD requiring less metallisation layers.…”

An Integrated Slot-Ring Traveling-Wave Radiator

“…At high millimeter-wave frequencies, traditional methods of power transfer off chip such as wire bonding and flip chip become increasingly lossy as their self-resonant frequencies are reached, significantly degrading the performance [5], [6]. However, at these frequencies, the dimension of a wavelength becomes comparable to the dimensions of the chip, allowing for efficient power transfer using antennas to radiate directly from the chip using standard planar CMOS metal layers [7]- [16].…”

“…Alternatively, creating new antennas that are driven by multiple ports and still less than a wavelength in any dimension enables power combining, impedance matching and power transfer through on-chip radiation simultaneously through the same EM structure [9]. These MPD antennas also can have slot duals, which allow for a low exclusive use area, as well as the power-combining, impedance-matching, and power-transfer benefits [7]. This paper presents a slot-based multi-port radiator that creates a traveling wave around the multi-port slot ring antenna by driving it at four different points in quadrature to create circularly polarized radiation directly from the chip.…”