Terahertz Beam Steering based on CMOS Tunable Metamaterials

This paper presents a CMOS-based tunable device to realize electromagnetic (EM) beam steering in the THz frequency domain. The device consists of 8×8 array with double layer dumbbell-liked metamaterial (DL
²
M) unit. The phase response of the THz wave can be manipulated through two MOS switches connected to the metamaterial unit. The design is implemented in the 180nm process and can achieve a maximum beam steering angle of 35° at 1.26 THz according to the simulation results. The highly integrated device demonstrates the potential of the active CMOS metamaterials for THz adaptive beamforming.