Sanming Hu

130-GHz On-Chip Meander Slot Antennas With Stacked Dielectric Resonators in Standard CMOS Technology

This work discusses the design methodologies of 130-GHz high gain and high efficiency on-chip meander slot antennas in a standard CMOS technology. In the proposed structure, stacked dielectric resonators (DRs) are placed on the top of the on-chip feeding element to form series-fed antenna array for antenna gain and efficiency improvement. The integrated antenna with double stacked DRs achieved a measured gain of 4.7 dBi at 130 GHz with a bandwidth of 11%. The antenna size is 0.8 ×0.9 mm2 and the simulation results indicate a radiation efficiency of 43%. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of an on-chip antenna gain and efficiency enhancement through stacked DRs.

A SiGe BiCMOS Transmitter/Receiver Chipset With On-Chip SIW Antennas for Terahertz Applications

This paper presents a terahertz (THz) transmitter (Tx) and receiver (Rx) chipset operating around 400 GHz in 0.13- μm SiGe BiCMOS technology. The Tx chip consists of a voltage-controlled oscillator, a buffer, a modulator, a power amplifier, a frequency tripler, and a substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) antenna. This antenna has an additional high-pass filtering characteristic to suppress the unwanted fundamental (f0) and second harmonic (2f0) signals by 50 and 30 dB, respectively. The Rx chip includes a proposed reconfigurable SIW antenna and a novel two-mode subharmonic mixer with ~ 5-dB reduction of conversion loss. The Rx chip consumes 50 nA from a 1.2-V supply. The measurement results of the Tx and Rx chips and a back-to-back test of the Tx/Rx chipset show the feasibility and pave the way of implementing a fully integrated THz system in silicon technology for mass production.

TSV Technology for Millimeter-Wave and Terahertz Design and Applications

The through silicon via (TSV) technology provides a promising option to realize a compact millimeter-wave (mmW) and terahertz (THz) system with high performance. As the fundamental elements in this system, transmission lines (T-lines) and interconnects are very important and therefore studied in this paper. A TSV-based substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) is also characterized. The results show that, the T-lines and interconnects are viable at frequencies lower than ~150 GHz whereas SIW can operate relatively well up to 300 GHz. In addition, two mmW components, i.e., a hairpin filter and a patch antenna, are designed by the TSV technology. Results of all the above passive components indicate that the low-resistivity silicon is the main cause of the total loss. Afterwards, two novel TSV-based topologies are proposed to efficiently integrate an antenna with active circuits for the mmW and THz applications.

D-band on-chip higher-order-mode dielectric-resonator antennas fed by half-mode cavity in CMOS technology

In this paper, on-chip higher-order-mode dielectric-resonator antennas (DRAs), fed by a half-mode-backed cavity structure using standard CMOS technology, are presented. With the dominant cavity mode (half-TEz100), the half-mode cavity-feeding structure provided a high antenna radiation efficiency. The dielectric resonators (DRs) were designed to operate at higher-order modes (TEx¿13, TEx¿15) to enhance the antenna gain. At around 135 GHz, the proposed antennas demonstrated measured gains of 6.2 dBi and 7.5 dBi for the TEx¿13 and TEx¿15 modes, respectively, with corresponding simulated radiation efficiencies of 46% and 42%. Both antennas had a measured impedance bandwidth of 7%. The proposed antennas not only accomplished high gain without occupying a large chip area, but also maintained comparable or even improved cost performance and simplicity over other on-chip antennas.

Compact High-Gain mmWave Antenna for TSV-Based System-in-Package Application

This paper presents a cavity-backed slot (CBS) antenna for millimeter-wave applications. The cavity of the antenna is fully filled by polymer material. This filling makes the fabrication of a silicon CBS antenna feasible, reduces the cavity size by 76.8%, and also maintains the inherent high-gain and wide bandwidth. In addition, a through-silicon via-based architecture is proposed to integrate the 135-GHz CBS antenna with active circuits for a complete system-in-package. Results show that the proposed structure not only reduces the footprint size but also suppresses the electromagnetic interference.

On the De-Embedding Issue of Millimeter-Wave and Sub-Millimeter-Wave Measurement and Circuit Design

The purpose of this paper is to address the de-embedding issue of millimeter-wave (mmWave) and sub-mmWave measurements and circuit design by extensively comparing several commonly used methods and by proposing a new full-matrix calculation-based de-embedding methodology. The comparison aims to investigate the impacts of different de-embedding methods on mmWave and sub-mmWave circuit design. A new de-embedding method has been proposed to achieve more accurate results on mmWave and sub-mmWave range. In this method, all possible extrinsic elements are subtracted from the measured device under test data by matrix calculation to eliminate the error from equivalent circuit. The influence of parasitic elements on the fT and fMAX are investigated. The comparison of the different de-embedding methods for transistors are performed up to 170 GHz, the results showed that the proposed method has good accuracy even at very high-frequency and it is suitable for mmWave and sub-mmWave measurements and circuit design.

3D TSV transformer design for DC-DC/AC-DC converter

This paper presents a new concept of 3D transformer structure realized by through silicon via (TSV) technology. A set of different turn ratio transformers have been designed and analyzed. The results show that the proposed 3D TSV transformer possesses good performance with small size. Finally, an AC to DC converter circuit which based on proposed transformer has been designed. The result demonstrates that proposed 3D TSV transformer is suitable for AC to DC converter design.

Self-Shielded Circularly Polarized Antenna-in-Package Based on Quarter Mode Substrate Integrated Waveguide Subarray

A self-shielded antenna-in-package (AiP) covering IEEE 802.11a band is proposed in this paper, and the antenna is designed using quarter mode substrate integrated waveguide (QMSIW) subarray technology. Electromagnetic interference (EMI) in a system-in-package integrated with AiP is discussed firstly. Electric field distribution of the proposed AiP is simulated, and it shows that the metallic via-holes array in the QMSIW subarray approximates to the electric wall to isolate the electromagnetic field coupling and then to increase the EMI shielding. The operating principle of the proposed antenna is investigated through an isosceles right triangular waveguide. An antenna prototype is fabricated and measured. The measured results match with the simulated and analyzed results very well. It is demonstrated that the proposed QMSIW subarray with metallic via-holes array gives an attractive and promising way to design the AiP with self-shielded property.

A Thermal Isolation Technique Using Through-Silicon Vias for Three-Dimensional ICs

This brief proposes a guard ring using through-silicon vias (TSVs) to isolate thermal coupling in a 3-D integrated circuit (3-D IC). To verify this idea, simulation and measurement are carried out. A ring oscillator (RO) is implemented in a 65-nm CMOS and then measured in four different conditions. The results show that, without affecting the inherent electrical performance of the RO, the designed TSV ring shields the RO from high-temperature environments. The oscillation frequency shifting is mitigated from 5.96 MHz without TSV to 2.11 MHz with the proposed TSV ring. This TSV-based structure provides a good option to alleviate thermal coupling in a highly integrated 3-D IC.

A low-cost 2.45-GHz wireless power link for biomedical devices

This paper presents a 2.45-GHz wireless link to power on the miniaturized biomedical devices. In this link, a chip antenna is adopted for RF power transmitting, and a resonant network consisting of a compact inductor and a chip capacitor is employed for energy harvesting. A prototype is fabricated and measured in the time- and frequency-domain. The measured results show that this power transfer link meets the system requirement. In addition, in the case of a capacitor with 20% variation, this link can still achieve the system required efficiency. It therefore eliminates the adaptive matching circuit and simplifies the system design.