A d-band on-chip dielectric resonator antenna fed by half-mode cavity in CMOS technology

In this paper, a D-band on-chip dielectric resonator antenna (DRA) fed by a half-mode backed cavity structure using a standard CMOS technology is presented. The half-mode cavity feeding structure in the proposed antenna permits easy excitation of both the dominant modes of the cavity (half-TE
^z
110) and the dielectric resonator (TE
^x
ε11). Based on this technology, a 135-GHz antenna is demonstrated, with a measured impedance bandwidth of 13% and a peak gain of up to 3.7 dBi at 132 GHz. Moreover, the radiation efficiency is simulated to be 62%. The chip size is 0.7 × 0.9 mm
²
including the test pad. The proposed antenna is able to maintain comparable radiation performance of the off-chip antennas and has the advantage of easy integration with active circuits and also low cost.