Wireless inter-chip interconnects using IR-UWB-CMOS

Wireless inter-chip interconnects using impulse-radio based ultra-wideband (IR-UWB) CMOS transmitter and receiver were developed for future 3D integration. Silicon integrated antennas were fabricated on a Si substrate by use of conventional back-end metallization processes. Characteristics of on-chip antennas were investigated in terms of device and material parameters. A single-chip IR-UWB CMOS receiver with an on-chip antenna was also investigated for verifying synchronization and data recovery as well as bit error rates for inter-chip wireless interconnects. The receiver could recover 200 Mbps data from the Gaussian monocycle pulse signal, which was transmitted from an on-chip antenna of the other chip at a distance of 0.5 mm. Bit error rate of 6.89 × 10^-9 for the distance of 9 cm was obtained in spurious environment.