A 60-GHz on-chip monopole antenna using silicon technology

Necessity of decreasing the size and circuit integration of microwave and millimeter wave components has increased the demand of silicon based technology. This paper presents the design of a 60GHz on-chip antenna based on silicon CMOS technology. A monopole antenna is selected for design because of its wideband characteristics. It exhibits an impedance bandwidth from 45GHz to 70GHz. The size of the proposed antenna structure is 1.953mm × 1.93mm × 0.25mm. A minimum |S₁₁| of -31.56dB is obtained at 58.5GHz and |S₁₁| of -27.77dB obtained at desired 60GHz frequency. A top metal layer M6 of antenna as radiating element and bottom layer M1 to work as ground plane for antenna is grown on silicon substrate and inside SiO₂ layer. A 15 μm thin layer of SiO₂ is used for isolation. Gain of -4.96dB is achieved at 60GHz and gain of -4.81dB is achieved at 58.5GHz. The simulation of design was done in finite element method (FEM) based electromagnetic solver HFSS v 15.0 software package.