High-Gain On-Chip Antenna Design on Silicon Layer With Aperture Excitation for Terahertz Applications

Alibakhshikenari, Mohammad; Virdee, Bal S.; Khalily, Mohsen; See, Chan H.; Abd-Alhameed, Raed; Falcone, Francisco; Denidni, Tayeb A.; Limiti, Ernesto

Abstract

This article investigates the feasibility of designing a high-gain on-chip antenna on silicon technology for sub-terahertz applications over a wide frequency range. High-gain is achieved by exciting the antenna using an aperture fed mechanism to couple electromagnetics energy from a metal slot-line, which is sandwiched between the silicon and polycarbonate substrates, to a 15-element array comprising circular and rectangular radiation patches fabricated on the top surface of the polycarbonate layer. An open ended microstrip line, which is orthogonal to the metal slot-line, is implemented on the underside of the silicon substrate. When the open ended microstrip line is excited it couples the signal to the metal slot-line which is subsequently coupled and radiated by the patch array. Measured results show the proposed on-chip antenna exhibits a reflection coefficient of less than -10 dB across 0.290 THz to 0.316 THz with a highest gain and radiation efficiency of 11.71 dBi and 70.8%, respectively, occurred at 0.3THz. The antenna has a narrow stopband between 0.292 THz to 0.294 THz. The physical size of the presented sub-terahertz on-chip antenna is 20×3.5×0.126mm3

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jul 17, 2020
• Online Publication Date: Jul 21, 2020
• Publication Date: 2020-09
• Deposit Date: Jul 18, 2020
• Publicly Available Date: Jul 22, 2020
• Journal: IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters
• Print ISSN: 1536-1225
• Electronic ISSN: 1548-5757
• Publisher: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 19
• Issue: 9
• Pages: 1576-1580
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/LAWP.2020.3010865
• Keywords: Terahertz (THz) On-chip antenna, coupling feeding mechanism, terahertz applications, high gain, silicon technology, wide frequency range
• Public URL: http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/2676481