On-Chip Dual-Band Rectangular Slot Antenna for Single-Chip Millimeter-Wave Identification Tag in Standard CMOS Technology

Abstract

In this paper, an on-chip dual-band rectangular slot antenna is proposed and demonstrated for a new generation of high data rate, battery free, yet active millimeter-wave identification (MMID) system, which is fully integrated on a single-CMOS die. It, therefore, does not require any external components (padless) nor the traditional packaging. The single-antenna solution proposed in this paper addresses the overall system compactness, the cost, and the underlying technical challenges related to multifrequency reader-tag MMID system, such as the alignment between the reader’s and tag’s antennas (accurate line-of-sight, especially in a short-range communication system). The targeted 24/40-GHz compact antenna is a hybrid structure of a dielectric resonator antenna (DRA) and a coplanar waveguide-fed rectangular slot antenna in order to facilitate interconnections with other integrated circuit blocks. Design analyses of the antenna are presented. Dual dielectric resonator is optimized to enhance the antenna radiation efficiency as well as the gain over the two bands. Using a 65-nm-bulk CMOS process, a chip was fabricated and tested. The prototyped antenna exhibits a measured gain of −1 dBi at 24 GHz with a bandwidth of 19%, 0 dBi at 40 GHz with a bandwidth of 20%, and a radiation efficiency of 41% and 31%, at 24 and 40 GHz, respectively. The antenna occupies a compact size of $2.5\times 2.5\times2.5$ mm3 with DRA.