Transient characteristics of integrated dipole antennas on silicon for ultra wideband wireless interconnects

For our investigation of UWB dipole antennas as integrated circuit wireless interconnects, a pair of aluminum dipole antennas were fabricated on oxidized Si substrates with resistivity of 10 Ω.cm. Their feature sizes are: 1.0-6.0 mm length; 10 μm width; 3.0 mm separation; 1 μm thickness. A transmitter dipole antenna was driven by a Gaussian pulse or monocycle pulse. The pulse shape at the receiver dipole antenna was measured by a sampling oscilloscope through baluns, 180° hybrid couplers. It was found that the received waveform was the time derivative of the input Gaussian pulse because two baluns in the measurement circuit acted as time derivative devices. Consequently, the transmitter antenna input waveform and the receiver antenna output waveform were found to be identical, so that the Si integrated antennas could be used for UWB communication in an integrated circuit chip with Gaussian pulses.