Integrated Planar Antenna Designs and Technologies for Millimeter-Wave Applications

This thesis investigates the design and realization of integrated planar antennas for millimeter-wave applications. The state-of-the-art antenna integration and packaging technologies are extensively studied, and an antenna design flow is proposed. A number of integrated antenna designs by applying different integration approaches and technologies, i.e. on printed circuit board (PCB), on-chip and in Benzocyclobutene (BCB) above-wafer process, are presented. The designs target not only high performance, but also the practical considerations of low-cost, feasibility, better reliability, and good reproducibility. They cover the industrial, medical, and scientific (ISM) bands of 60 GHz, 122 GHz, and 245 GHz in the millimeter-wave range with outstanding performance in a low-cost fashion by applying innovative, appropriate integration methods and sophisticated design. By applying the localized backside etching (LBE) process the presented on-chip antennas achieve measured peak gains of 6–8.4 dBi for above 100 GHz applications with simulated efficiencies of 54–75%. These figures are comparable to that of on-board or in-package antennas. To the best of my knowledge, the achieved gain of 7.5–8.4 dBi in the band of 124–134 GHz for the 130 GHz on-chip double folded dipole antenna is the highest reported result to date for planar on-chip antennas based on low-resistivity silicon technologies. System demonstrators with integrated antennas are realized and measured. The 60 GHz demonstrator with on-PCB differential bunny-ear antenna and a novel bond-wire compensation scheme achieves a data rate of 3.6 Gbit/s over a 15-meter distance, which was the best reported analog front-end without beamforming function in silicon technology regarding both the data rate and transmission distance at the time of its publication. A 245 GHz single-channel transmitter and a single-channel receiver with integrated on-chip antennas are also demonstrated. An effective isotropic radiated power (EIRP) of 7–8 dBm is achieved for the transmitter, which is the highest reported value at 245 GHz for a SiGe transmitter with a single antenna so far. Furthermore, the receiver has the highest reported integration level for any 245 GHz SiGe receiver. A 245 GHz 4-channel-transmitter array with integrated on-chip antenna array is also realized to achieve spatial power combining, which offers 11 dB higher EIRP than a single-channel transmitter. From the presented results of the thesis it is feasible to realize high performance integrated planar antennas in the entire millimeter-wave range and beyond in a cost-effective fashion.