Front-to-back ratio enhancement of on-chip antenna using artificial dielectrics at 300 GHz

Summary form only given. Artificial dielectrics (ADs) are composed of periodic electrically small metallic structures embedded in a host material in order to increase its equivalent relative permittivity. ADs have been extensively studied and used for decades for radar development. Recently, there is an renewed interest in planar ADs, driven by the ever increasing demand for high efficiency silicon integrated antennas (K. Takahagi and E. Sano, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., 59-10, 2011). In integrated technology, artificial dielectric layers (ADLs) can be realized by multiple layers of patches with small electrical dimensions. The sub-wavelength sizes of the patches ensure keeping the ohmic losses very low, since no resonant currents are supported. These structures have been shown to enhance the front-to-back ratio and the gain of planar antennas, without supporting surface waves (W. H. Syed and A. Neto, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., 61-11, 2013).In this contribution, we present the design and experimental results of a 300 GHz ADL-loaded antenna prototype. The radiator consists of a double slot, fed by a co-planar waveguide and loaded with an AD slab to increase the forward radiation and the gain. The antenna and ADL are shown in Fig. 1(a). The ADL is constituted by 7 layers of periodic patches with 5 m inter-layer distance. An in house silicon based integrated circuit process has been used to realize the prototype. The simulated and measured reflection coefficients are shown in Fig. 1(b). The measurement of the antenna radiation pattern are under progress and will be presented at the time of the conference.