Novel wire-grid nantenna array for optical communication systems

A novel wire-grid array of nanorods is introduced for the first time in this paper. The array consists of five gold radiating rods and four gold perpendicular connecting rods. Via optimizing the lengths of the radiators and connectors, high value of directivity has been obtained. The new array is designed for operation at a wavelength of 1.55 μm, which is commonly used by optical communication system. The overall physical and electrical sizes of the array are (0.68 μm -by- 1.05 μm) and (3λ_g/2 -by- λ_g), respectively, with a maximum directivity of 9.25 dBi. The new array is analyzed using a commercial full-wave finite-difference time-domain package. It provides symmetric radiation pattern with reasonable side-lobe-level and extremely low cross-polarization level.