Cavity Size Effects on the Performance of Superstrate Folded Dipole Antennas for 60 GHz Applications

This paper describes a cost-effective approach for an off-chip antenna design and construction that would show the potential for its integration with a 60 GHz SiGe chipset, in a low-cost plastic chip-scale packaging technology or silicon carrier based wafer-scale packaging technology. Obtaining the maximum bandwidth-gain product within a given design constrain is the basic challenge for the design of printed planar antennas. An approach that combines a fused-silica superstrate and an air substrate suitable for flip-chip attachment and packaging are presented, where the antenna is printed on the bottom side of the substrate and suspended in air over the reflecting ground. This solution results in a wide bandwidth of more than 30% and an antenna efficiency of over 90%. The model to hardware correlation is very good, but both show that there exists a gain dip around 60 GHz frequency.