A 340-GHz high-gain flip-chip packaged dielectric resonator antenna for THz imaging applications

Abstract

A high-gain flip-chip packaged dielectric resonator antenna (DRA) for THz imaging applications is proposed in this work. The THz DRA is composed of a high-resistivity silicon dielectric resonator fabricated in an integrated-passive-devices (IPD) technology and a feeding patch realized on a 0.18-μm CMOS chip. The DR is flipped and thermo-compressively bonded to the chip by gold microbumps. With a 625-μm thick DR, a higher-order mode of TE δ, 1, 9 can be excited, which greatly enhances the antenna gain. The simulated antenna gain can be 5.9 dBi while providing radiation efficiency of 53% at 340 GHz. A comparison method is proposed to characterize the DRA performance. The measured maximum gain improvement of the proposed DRA over an on-chip CMOS patch antenna can be as high as 4.9 dB at 322 GHz. A CMOS imager with the proposed DRA is also successfully employed to demonstrate a THz transmissive imaging system at 322 GHz.