On-Chip Terahertz antenna array based on amalgamation of metasurface-inspired and artificial magnetic conductor technologies for next generation of wireless electronic devices

Abstract

The paper presents a feasibility study on an innovative terahertz (THz) on-chip antenna array designed to reliably meet the high-performance connectivity requirements for next generation of wireless devices to enable bandwidth intensive applications, superfast fast streaming, bulk data exchange between internet of things (IoT) devices/smartphones and the development of holographic video conferencing. The significantly smaller wavelength of the THz-band and metasurface-inspired and artificial magnetic conductor (AMC) technologies are exploited here to realize an on-chip antenna. Several experimental on-chip antenna arrays of various matrix sizes were investigated for application at millimeter-wave/Terahertz RF front-end transceivers. The technique proposed here is shown to enhance the antennas impedance bandwidth, gain and radiation efficiency. Purely for experimental purposes a 2 × 24 radiation element array was fabricated. It exhibits an average measured gain of 20.36 dBi and radiation efficiency of 37.5% across 0.3–0.314 THz. For proof of the concept purposes a THz receiver incorporating the proposed on-chip antenna was modelled. The results show that with the proposed antenna array a THz receiver can provide a gain of 25 dB when the antenna is directly matched to low-noise amplifier stage.