Switched Beam SIW Horn Arrays at 60 GHz for 360° Reconfigurable Chip-to-Chip Communications With Interference Considerations

Abstract

Traditional wired interconnects in multicore multichip (MCMC) systems can be replaced with chip-integrated switched beam antenna arrays to provide reconfigurable chip-to-chip communications. By simply switching the directive beams of the arrays, the chips can be made to dynamically communicate with their surrounding neighbors. Radiation from the arrays in the unintended direction, however, causes interference when multiple pairs of chips are simultaneously communicating. In this paper, the noise and interference limitations of such concurrent chip-to-chip communication systems are analyzed at 60 GHz for the channels defined in the IEEE 802.11ay standard. Each array consists of eight substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) horn elements printed on a thin dielectric substrate. The elements can be individually excited to produce eight directive endfire beams, providing full 360° coverage, in the horizontal plane. The substrate acts as a hybrid space-surface wave interconnect (HSSW-I) that allows near-field, space and surface wave coupling to occur between the arrays, and thus, increases interchip transmission. The antenna and link parameters that dictate the signal-to-noise-plus-interference ratio (SNIR) of such systems are established by considering all the major components. The maximum achievable data rates are then determined based on the SNIR, calculated from the measured and simulated transmission coefficients between the arrays.