On-Chip Terahertz antenna array based on amalgamation of metasurface-inspired and artificial magnetic conductor technologies for next generation of wireless electronic devices
Mohammad Alibakhshikenari, Bal S. Virdee, Shahram Salekzamankhani, Fatemeh Babaeian, Syed Mansoor Ali, Amjad Iqbal, Muath Al‐Hasan
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.