Tunable Plasmonic Graphene Antenna Array for Communications at THz Frequencies

Abstract

The existence of plasmonic waves at a graphene/dielectric interface at THz frequencies enables the use of graphene as the radiative element of antennas working at this frequency range, but with a smaller lateral dimension compared to a standard metallic antenna. Due to the low carrier mobility in large-area graphene, result of its manufacturing process, the emitted radiation of graphene antennas is still smaller than its metallic counterpart. In this work, we show that the low emission of a graphene antenna can be compensated by antenna arrays. The proposed 1x4 graphene antenna array presents a far-field radiated gain of 9.3 dBi with a resonance frequency at 269 GHz. The resonating frequency of the graphene antenna array can also be tuned by an electrostatic bias.