Ronny Hahnel

Integrated stacked Vivaldi-shaped on-chip antenna for 180 GHz

A fully integrated, stacked Vivaldi-shaped on-chip antenna design for the frequency range around 180GHz is presented. The antenna has been designed in order to work on the multi-layered IHP 130μm SiGe BiCMOS technology (SG13). Its size is approximately 1mm2 and has been successfully taped-out.

Energy-Efficient Transceivers for Ultra-Highspeed Computer Board-to-Board Communication

Enabling the vast computational and throughput requirements of future high performance computer systems and data centers requires innovative approaches. In this paper, we will focus on the communication between computer boards. One alternative to the bottleneck presented by copper wire based cable-bound communication is the deployment of wireless links between nodes consisting of processors and memory on different boards in a system. In this paper, we present an interdisciplinary approach that targets an integrated wireless transceiver for short-range ultra-high speed computer board-to-board communication. Based on our achieved results and current developments, we will also estimate energy consumption of such a transceiver.

Wearable Vivaldi UWB planar antenna for in-body communication

This paper proposes a planar Vivaldi antenna design in ultra wideband (UWB) for medical wireless capsule endoscope applications, in which it acts as the on-body receiver antenna. The proposed antenna connects two opposite Vivaldi variants on one side of the substrate and is fed by a radial stub microstrip on the other side. An additional metallic reflector, added at the Vivaldi side with a certain spacing distance, effectively converts two opposite end-fire radiations from two opposite Vivaldi elements to one broadside radiation. The resulting planar Vivaldi antenna structure then has the maximum radiation normal to the Vivaldi plane so that the receiver antenna can be parallel to the body, which provides possibility for a compact planar belt implementation. On-body measurement further verifies the impedance matching of the proposed Vivaldi antenna. Diversity reception configuration and performance evaluation including space diversity and polarization diversity have been carried out based on the proposed Vivaldi element as well as an optimized linear polarized omnidirectional capsule antenna. A fully-optimized receiver antenna belt can be expected by combining both the space and polarization diversities.

Design of a cloverleaf antenna for an antenna coupled bolometer for room temperature THz imaging

THz-imaging enables promising applications in the medical and security domain, such as detectors for skin cancer or full-body scanners. These new possibilities arise the need for detectors in the THz frequency range. An antenna-coupled bolometer approach in a standard CMOS-SOI process, followed by a MEMS post CMOS process, is suggested to fabricate such a detector. Therefore, in this paper a cloverleaf shaped antenna design for the frequency range 0.5 THz to 1.5 THz is presented. Several design steps are shown together with measurement results regarding the influence of the MEMS process.

Distributed on-chip antennas to increase system bandwidth at 180 GHz

This paper presents integrated, distributed on-chip antennas. The aim is to achieve a higher system bandwidth due to the utilization of multiple antennas and the combining of their frequency ranges. All designs will be manufactured in the 130nm IHP SG13G2 process. Furthermore the measurement setup is described and measurement results are shown.

Design of a wide-bandwidth on-chip antenna for uncooled passive THz imaging

The design of a broadband on-chip antenna for passive THz imaging in the frequency range of 0.6 THz to 1.4 THz is reported. The antenna design has to fulfill the requirements of the IBM CMOS process and the MEMS post CMOS processing. The antenna is coupled directly to the sensor, a MOSFET bolometer. Because of this direct coupling and the need for real time imaging, only extremely physically small antennas are feasible. Hence, typical broadband antennas like the toothed log-periodic antenna are not useable for this application and new antenna approaches have to be examined.

Broadside radiating vivaldi antenna for the 60 GHz band

A low cost, novel antenna design based on a Vivaldi structure for the 60 GHz band is presented. The antenna concept may be manufactured on a multilayer PCB but is still compact. It provides both a wide band matching as well as a high realized gain (>7 dBi) at 50 Ohm input impedance. Though based on the Vivaldi structure the main beam directs vertically with respect to the printed circuit board. The proposed antenna design is also suitable for an InPackage technology. Here we present two concepts with microstrip feed and stripline feed.

60 GHz broadside radiating vivaldi antenna

A novel broadside radiating Vivaldi antenna for the frequency range from 57GHz to 64GHz has been designed, manufactured and measured.

Numerical computation of radar echoes measured by MARSIS during phobos flybys

The Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding, “MARSIS”, on board MarsExpress is the first and so far only space borne radar that observed the Martian moon Phobos. Radar echoes were measured for different flyby trajectories. The primary aim of the low frequency sounding of the crust of Phobos is to prove the feasibility of deep sounding. In this paper we present a numerical method that allows precise computation of radar echoes backscattered from the surface of large objects. The software is based on a combination of a Physical Optics calculation of surface scattering of the radar target, and a Method of Moments approach to calculate the radiation pattern of the whole space borne radar system, whereby the calculation of the frequency dependent radiation pattern takes into account all relevant gain variations and coupling effects aboard the space craft. This paper explains the simulation techniques and presents a comparison of simulation results for different orbits, and an interpretation of the backscattered signals.

Dual-polarized Vivaldi array for X- and Ku-Band

A very lightweight, broad-band, dual polarized antenna array with 128 elements for the frequency range from 7 GHz to 18 GHz has been designed, manufactured and measured. The total gain at the center frequency was measured to be 20 dBi excluding feeding network losses.