Integrated Antennas Monolithic and Hybrid Approaches

Abstract: This thesis considers integration of antennas and active electronics manufactured on the same substrate. The main topic is on-chip antennas for commercial silicon processes, but hybrid integration using printed circuit board technology is also addressed.The possible use of micromachining techniques as a means of reducing substrate losses of antennas manufactured on low resistivity silicon wafers is investigated. Compact dipole, loop, and inverted-F antennas for the 20-40 GHz frequency range are designed, implemented, and characterized. The results show significantly improved antenna efficiency when micromachining is used as a post-processing step for on-chip antennas manufactured in silicon technology.High resistivity wafers are used in a commercial silicon germanium technology to improve the efficiency of dipole antennas realized using the available circuit metal layers in the process. Monolithically integrated 24 GHz receivers with on-chip antennas are designed and evaluated with regard to antenna and system performance. No noticeable degradation of the receiver performance caused by cross talk between the antenna and the integrated circuit is observed.For low frequency antenna arrays, such as base station antennas, hybrid integration of active devices within the antenna aperture is treated. A compact varactor based phase shifter for traveling wave antenna applications is proposed and evaluated. Electrically steerable traveling wave patch antenna arrays, with the phase shifters implemented in the same conductor layer as the radiating elements, are designed and manufactured in microstrip technology. It is experimentally verified that the radiation from the feed network and phase shifters in the proposed antenna configuration is small.