Beam steering and impedance matching of plasmonic horn nanoantennas

Abstract

In this paper, we study a plasmonic horn nanoantenna on a metal-backed substrate. The horn nanoantenna structure consists of a two-wire transmission line (TWTL) flared at the end. We analyze the effect of the substrate thickness on the nanoantenna's radiation pattern, and demonstrate beam steering in a broad range of elevation angles. Furthermore, we analyze the effect of the ground plane on the impedance matching between the antenna and the TWTL, and observe that the ground plane increases the back reflection into the waveguide. To reduce the reflection, we develop a transmission line model to design an impedance matching section which leads to 99.75% power transmission to the nanoantenna.

Key Roles of Plasmonics in Wireless THz Nanocommunications—A Survey

“…Moreover, hybrid wireless optical on chip communication takes advantage of the entire WDM spectrum when propagating in the optical wired links, guaranteeing even higher multiple capacities, as required by intra-chip communications [43]. Various configurations of plasmonic nanoantennas for supporting wireless-optical on chip communication have been proposed in the literature, such as plasmonic horn nanoantennas [44], a directional plasmonic Yagi-Uda nanoantenna placed on a dielectric waveguide [45], or a plasmonic nanoantenna array on a dielectric waveguide [46], or various configurations of plasmonic Vivaldi antennas (double, or an array of them) to name but a few [47,48]. Plasmonic antennas will be described more analytically in the upcoming section.…”

Plasmonics for Telecommunications Applications

“…Plasmonic resonances, hybrid electronic-photonic modes, allow for on-chip devices seamlessly integrating the exceptional data rates of optical signals with the extreme miniaturization features of nanoelectronic circuits [55][56][57][58][59]. In particular, plasmonic nanoantennas, i.e., nanoscale analogous of RF antennas, has become a recent trend of research due to their incredible ability to convert localized into propagating far-field electromagnetic waves and vice versa [11][12][13][14][15]. However, at these high frequency regimes light penetrates the metals and ohmic losses become substantially higher, i.e., metals cannot be considered as perfect electric conductors (PEC), drastically changing the way they are designed in comparison to their RF counterparts.…”

“…Wireless information transfer at nanoscale has recently emerged as a promising alternative [76][77][78][79]. In this approach, communication performance is strongly dependent on the design of the corresponding nanolinks, i.e., the nanoemitters and nanoreceivers, for which RF antenna theory is being actively used [11][12][13][14][15]. We will review here some of the most recent approaches for highly efficient nanoantenna designs.…”

“…These wireless optical data transfer/receiver links can be arranged with λ/2 separation in order to reach an efficient energy and data transfer up to millimeter distances [14]. Another waveguide-fed nanoscale analogue to a widely known RF model is the plasmonic horn nanoantenna [12,13,[101][102][103][104], illustrated in Figure 2e. This concept exploits the high directivity, low reflection, and planar far-field radiation pattern properties of conventional RF horn antennas at nanoscale levels.…”

“…The excitation and radiation properties of LSPRs can be used in wireless optical links in, for example, the optoelectronic conversion of optical-to-THz and THz-to-optical signals for the seamless integration of fibers-to-THz communication front-ends [4]. Ultrafast board-to-board and chip-to-chip communications approaches, on the other hand, are also being investigated with nanometric-length scale analogies of radio frequency (RF) antennas to work in the optical frequency range [11][12][13][14][15]. In addition to these optical-wireless nanolinks, SPRs properties can also be used for plasmonic waveguides [16][17][18][19][20], modulators [21,22], filters [23,24], switches, and routers [25][26][27].…”