Wave propagation channels for intra-chip wireless communication systems

Wireless interconnects have been proposed to solve the traditional metal line interconnects problem caused by the continuous downscaling of dimensions in CMOS technology. Many recent researches have focused on device designs and integrated antennas for wireless interconnect applications. However, aside from previous work, the basic propagation mechanisms on integrated chip structures have not been carefully studied, despite their importance for the development of intra-chip wireless communications. In general, there are several wave components that lead to different propagation paths (both physical and spectral) in a multi-layer chip structure. Each wave component travels with different propagation characteristics (phase/group velocity, attenuation), such that dispersion/distortion and interference can become important issues. In order to have a better understanding of the contributions from different wave components to the total electric field, in this work we use the Green function for a layered medium, evaluated via complex-plane analysis, to separate the discrete and continuous spectral field components. This model, containing both physically different propagation paths (direct radiation and guided energy), and multispectral components (discrete and continuous spectra), can be considered to be a generalization of the usual ray-based idea of multipath.