The Potentials, Challenges, and Future Directions of On-Chip-Antennas for Emerging Wireless Applications—A Comprehensive Survey

Abstract

The ever-growing demand for low power, high performance, cost-effective, low-profile, and highly integrated wireless systems for emerging applications has triggered the need for the enormous innovations in wireless transceiver systems, components, architectures and technologies. This is especially valid for the antenna which is an integral component of the wireless transceiver systems and contributes significantly in determining their overall performance. Antenna-on-Chip (AoC) is an alternative antenna technology, which has drawn a substantial attention in recent days because of its various benefits over off-chip antenna technology. A few of these benefits include miniaturization, low power, low cost, and high integration of the wireless modules. Motivated by these valuable advantages and to unveil the true potential of the AoCs, this article presents, for the first time, a comprehensive survey of the suitability, advantages, and challenges of the AoCs for the emerging wireless applications such as 5th generation (5G) Wireless Systems, Internet-of-Things (IoT) Wireless Devices and Systems, Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), Wireless Interconnects, Wireless Energy Transfer, Radio Frequency (RF) Energy Harvesting, Biomedical Implants, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), Autonomous vehicles, Innovative characterization methods for Integrated Circuits (ICs) and Antennas, and Smart City. In addition, this article presents the current stateof-the-art of the AoC's applications by classifying their applications in Millimeter-Wave (MM-Wave) band, Terahertz (THz) band, and low-frequency bands. The article also investigates and describes some useful methods for the mitigation of the challenges and issues posed by the emerging applications for the realization of the AoCs in a systematic manner. A concise description of the future directions of the AoCs with respect to each emerging application is also a part of this article. It is expected that this well-structured and organized survey will not only act as an excellent source of scholarship for the relevant research community, but also open up a world of novel research opportunities.

Performance-Issues-Mitigation-Techniques for On-Chip-Antennas – Recent Developments in RF, MM-Wave, and Thz Bands With Future Directions

“…Biomedical implants [161]- [163], wireless sensor networks [164]- [167], unmanned aerial vehicles [168]- [170], and wireless energy transfer [171]- [174] are some other vital applications, which operate in RF and microwave bands. Although a number of AoCs have been designed in RF and microwave bands as listed in [45], the use of performance enhancement methods for these AoCs is scant as evidenced by Table 1 of the paper. As a result, the gain and radiation efficiency of these AoCs are at the lower side of performance metric as shown in [45].…”

“…Although a number of AoCs have been designed in RF and microwave bands as listed in [45], the use of performance enhancement methods for these AoCs is scant as evidenced by Table 1 of the paper. As a result, the gain and radiation efficiency of these AoCs are at the lower side of performance metric as shown in [45]. One possible reason for this is the chip-area tradeoff of performance enhancement methods with the AoC in these bands because of low-frequency, i.e.…”

“…AoC, in opposite to off-chip antennas, relaxes the impedance matching network between antenna and RF front-end of wireless system. In fact, the impedance matching network can be eliminated altogether if the antenna and RF frontend are conjugately matched with each other using a codesign method [45]. However, a limited progress has been observed in this regard yet despite a tremendous potential of this technique.…”

“…Some most prominent applications include: the MM-Wave transceivers for multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) based 5G wireless systems (e.g. Figure 1 which shows a simplistic view of this), IoT wireless devices and systems, wireless sensor network nodes, biomedical implants, RF energy harvesting, wireless power transfer, smart city, wearable devices, autonomous automobiles, unmanned aerial vehicles, as explained in [45]. Small satellite based wireless systems is another emerging application in this regard [46].…”

High Gain Antenna Miniaturization With Parasitic Lens

“…Due to the avalanche of 5G handset [1]- [6], wearable [7]- [13], and implant wireless devices [14]- [19], the needs for antenna miniaturization are increasingly extended. However, the reducing dimension of antenna causes the restriction on its performance including bandwidth, radiation efficiency, and especially for gain [20]- [22]. The antenna miniaturization inherently has a narrow radiation area that broadens the divergence of the emitted wave results of the low directivity and gain.…”