Reliability of wireless on-chip interconnects based on carbon nanotube antennas

Design technologies for integrated systems beyond the current CMOS era will present unprecedented advantages such as very high device densities and challenges such as soaring power dissipation issues. Most of the research effort in the emerging area of nanoelectronics has revolved around creating novel devices to replace the traditional CMOS transistor. The development of higher-level communication architectures necessary for integrating such devices into high performance systems has not received the same level of attention so far. With the current trend of CMOS scaling, traditional planar metal-based on-chip interconnect schemes are projected to be the principal bottleneck in meeting the performance needs and specifications of Systems on Chip (SoCs). Three-dimensional integration and on-chip optical and RF communication links have been envisioned as promising alternatives. In this paper we explore the possibility of having an on-chip wireless communication infrastructure using carbon nanotube antennas operating in optical frequencies, and the effect of variations in nanotube properties on the communication behavior.