Folded-Slot Integrated Antenna Array for Millimeter-Wave CMOS Applications on Standard HR SOI Substrate

Silicon-based technology is now able to address new applications such as Wireless HDMI. Performances of CMOS and BiCMOS transistors enable RF designers to integrate the entire front-end. The last building block of the integration is the antenna. A folded-slot antenna and 4-antenna linear array layouts on HR SOI silicon using standard CMOS process BEOL are described. In this paper, return loss and gain measurements are performed on both structures to show the interest of an array to improve the global performances of the RF chain. The measured gain is increased from -4.7 dBi (folded-slot) to -1.8 dBi (4-element array), which is compatible with a 2 meter wireless link at 60 GHz. Moreover, an antenna radiation pattern measurement setup which is at the R&D State-of-the-Art is described and exploited for extracting radiation patterns from on-silicon mmWave antennas.