Packaged transceiver with on-chip integrated antenna and planar discrete lens for UWB millimeter-wave communications

A novel cost-efficient antenna architecture suitable for medium-range and low-power wireless millimeter-wave communications in fixed Line-Of-Sight (LOS) configuration is presented. It is based on a packaged low-power (112 mW) transceiver with integrated antennas associated to a planar discrete-lens antenna array focusing the radiated beam in order to reach high gain levels while keeping a simple and low-cost packaged transceiver technology. This concept has been designed and demonstrated experimentally in V-band (60 GHz). The transmit-array (25×25×10mm
³
) is realized in a low-cost printed technology and provides a circularly-polarized broadside beam with a maximum gain of 17.6 dBi at 60 GHz and a 3-dB beamwidth of 9.5°×11.5°. A maximum communication range of 2–6 meters for 0.5–2.2 Gbps data rates with a Bit-Error-Rate lower than 10
⁻⁵
is demonstrated experimentally thanks to this novel antenna.