An E-Band Silicon-IC-to-Waveguide Contactless Transition Incorporating a Low-Loss Spatial Power Combiner

Numerical analysis of Huygens-like on-chip antennas for mm-wave applications

“…3) that for an electric dipole there is only 60% of power radiated into air at best, mainly due to the substrate wave (SW) coupling [14]. Antenna engineers try to reduce the effect of SW by micro-machining cavities under the radiating elements [19], shielding off the highpermittivity substrates [15], using artificial electromagnetic band-gap (EBG) structures [20], etc. All those techniques make the chip structure very complex, and the performance of an antenna then depends on the particular design.…”

Silicon-Based IC-Waveguide Integration for Compact and High-Efficiency mm-Wave Spatial Power Combiners

“…Compared with the existing solution presented in [11], the utilization of TSV (see Fig. 4) enables a 66.6% reduction in chip size since we can avoid using artificial magnetic conductors in the form of λ g /4 corrugations to suppress undesired waves that would otherwise bypass the IC.…”

“…4) enables a 66.6% reduction in chip size since we can avoid using artificial magnetic conductors in the form of λ g /4 corrugations to suppress undesired waves that would otherwise bypass the IC. Moreover, the use of TSVs enables substrate-mode suppression by providing an RF-short for any possible mode inside the silicon substrate, unlike the structure in [11], in which extra gap-WG pins were used underneath the IC to suppress the substrate mode.…”

“…However, the structure is bulky, and the field tapering reduces the combining efficiency. For these reasons, the exploration of new concepts to realize compact and highly efficient power combiners is essential for efficient high-power systems [11]. In addition, the work [12] presented a comparison of several silicon technologies in terms of substrate electric properties to realize a low-loss contactless transition for IC-WG integration.…”

“…This concept leads to generating more output power as discussed in [14]. However, the design reported in [11] and [15] implements a novel contactless connection for a silicon IC-WG integration, thereby introducing new challenges with respect to a p-doped lossy silicon substrate and strict metal density/design rules. In the concept, electromagnetic (EM) coupling enhanced by a cavity resonator is used to establish the connection between an array of field launchers and a ridge WG.…”