High-Efficiency On-Chip Dielectric Resonator Antenna for mm-Wave Transceivers

A high radiation efficiency on-chip antenna is presented in a low-resistivity silicon technology. The proposed antenna configuration consists of a high-permittivity rectangular dielectric resonator excited by an H-slot antenna implemented in a silicon integrated circuit process. Using the Wheeler method an efficiency of 48% has been measured for the integrated antenna at 35 GHz. The maximum size of this low profile antenna (h = 0.5 mm) is close to lambda(0)/5 (considering the dielectric resonator), and its radiation gain is around 1 dBi at 35 GHz. Moreover, the bandwidth of this antenna is 4.15 GHz (12%). Simulations and measurements show that by removing the passivation layer on top of the H-slot aperture the radiation efficiency increases by 10%.