Investigation of proximity coupled patch antennas suitable for MMIC integration

The proximity coupled patch antenna is a promising candidate for integration with MMIC devices. The primary advantage of such a structure is that minimal area on the expensive semiconductor wafer is consumed, with only the formation of the open circuit microstrip feed line required. However, MMIC wafers are typically of high permittivity, hence the proximity coupled patch antenna must be capable of exhibiting reasonable performance on such a material. In this paper, we investigate proximity coupled printed antenna configurations suitable for direct integration with MMICs. We examine single layer and dual layer geometries and present design trends and also we evaluate the performance of these radiators.