Integrated Vivaldi plasmonic antenna for wireless on-chip optical communications

Abstract

In this paper we propose a novel hybrid optical plasmonic Vivaldi antenna for operation in the standard C telecommunication band for wavelengths in the 1550 nm range. The antenna is fed by a silicon waveguide and is designed to have high gain and large bandwidth. The shape of the radiation pattern, with a main lobe along the antenna axis, makes this antenna suitable for point-to-point connections for inter- or intra-chip optical communications. Direct port-to-port short links for different connection distances and in a homogeneous environment have also been simulated to verify, by comparing the results of a full-wave simulation with the Friis transmission equation, the correctness of the antenna parameters obtained via near-to-far field transformation.

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].…”

“…They are usually applicable in the microwave and radio frequencies, but also in infrared/optical frequency domain. Vivaldi plasmonic antenna is formed by a slotted microstrip deposited above a silica substrate, along with a hybrid Si-plasmonic coupler, as an impedance matched element to feed silicon waveguides [43]. By increasing the number of Vivaldi antennas, an increase in the directivity and the gain is anticipated too.…”

Ray Tracing Modeling of Electromagnetic Propagation for On-Chip Wireless Optical Communications

“…In spite of the tiny wavelength, the design of highly directive optical antennas is not a straightforward task, because the integration need poses serious constrains on the size of the on-chip devices. For instance, the plasmonic antennas proposed in References [8,12] exhibit a gain always lower than 10 dB, whereas it is increased to about 20 dB by the dielectric solution discussed in Reference [13], though at the expense of a quite larger antenna size. Owing to the current limitation on optical antenna gain, propagation conditions better than in free space would be therefore extremely beneficial to the optical wireless communications.…”

“…Therefore, optical wireless networks on chip (OWiNoC) have been recently proposed [8], aiming at preserving the main advantages of WiNoC (low latency, simpler network layout) but fostering far-field propagation and facilitating the antenna integration process. Moreover, relying on wireless optical communications can be particularly beneficial to envisage hybrid wired/wireless optical networks, because the same wavelength propagating on optical waveguides could be directly exploited for wireless connections without any further electro-optical conversion [8].…”

Polarization and structure dependent optical characteristics of the three-arm nanoantenna with C3v symmetry and broken symmetry

“…Plasmonic nanoantennas, which usually consist of metallic nanoparticles, figure prominently in many fields, such as plasmonics [1] , nonlinear optics [2] , biosensing [3] , and wireless communications [4] . Owing to the excitation of the localized surface plasmon polaritons (LSPPs), the optical characteristics of these antennas are highly sensitive to the shape and size of the nanoparticles, the optical parameters of the surrounding environment, etc.…”