Fully packaged millimetre-wave dielectric waveguide with multimodal excitation

A millimetre-wave interconnect on a very low-cost plastic waveguide is proposed for applications in terabit per second wireline links. Simultaneous utilisation of the two fundamental and polarisation-orthogonal degenerate E_x¹¹ and E_y¹¹ waveguide modes doubles the capacity of a single line without sacrificing robustness or adding implementation cost and complexity. A prototype of the structure has been fabricated in high-density polyethylene (HDPE) fed with dipole/slot coupling structures on Rogers RO6006, and operates at frequencies of about 75 GHz with an aggregate 3 dB bandwidth exceeding 60 GHz.