A Yagi–Uda Array of High-Efficiency Wire-Bond Antennas for On-Chip Radio Applications

In this paper, we present a high-efficiency nonplanar Yagi-Uda antenna array consisting of six wire bonds for on-chip radio applications. The measured and simulated results are presented for the radiation pattern, gain, and radiation efficiency of the antenna at 40 GHz. The array has been characterized with two different ground-plane sizes that are 0.32??² and 1.4??². The arrays achieved the measured gains of 6.0 and 8.1 dBi for the small and large ground-plane variations, respectively, after numerically removing the loss from the feed line. The efficiencies of the antennas were extracted using the simulated directivity values. The efficiency of the large ground antenna was 82.5%, whereas that of the small ground antenna was 72.0%. Single wire-bond antennas are also characterized when integrated directly on a silicon-germanium complementary-metal-oxide-semiconductor transceiver chip with -1.4-dBi gain and 51% efficiency. This paper builds on measurements of a single wire-bond antenna over ground-plane sizes ranging from 0.5??² to 2.1??² , which achieved gains of 0.4-3.6 dBi and efficiencies of 51%-84%.