Silicon and soft-board millimetre wave antennas for broad-band mobile wireless

HRS Silicon, GaAs, and soft-board millimetre wave antennas have been designed fabricated and measured for broadband MM-wave mobile wireless applications up to 65 GHz. Series array silicon antenna arrays are constructed using half-wavelength dipoles. The wafer selected has 10 k/spl Omega/cm resistivity, thickness 300 /spl mu/m, chosen to prevent surface wave effects while permitting handling, and a 1 /spl mu/m thick SiO/sub 2/ layer is patterned underneath a 1.5 /spl mu/m thick aluminium metalization in order to reduce the leakage current. Soft-board, 254 /spl mu/m thickness and 2.19 relative permittivity, single and array patch antennas are also designed. For comparison a GaAs (/spl epsiv//sub r/=12.9) MMIC antenna constructed on the Philips EDO2AH process is discussed briefly. The elements and arrays are designed to be wafer probed, or connected via microstrip to WR-15 waveguide. Measurement of insertion loss has been performed and a comparison between measured and simulated results is reported.