High Efficiency Micromachined Antennas: Micromachined Antennas for Microwave andMm-Wave Applications

摘要

This project concentrates on the development of high efficiency Si micromachinedantennas. Microstrip antennas are used in a broad range of applications from communication systems (radars, telemetry and navigation) to biomedical systems, primarily due to their simplicity, conformability and low manufacturing cost. With the recent development of microwave and millimeter-wave integrated circuits and the trend to incorporate all microwave devices on a single chip for low-cost and high density, there is a need to fabricate microstrip antennas in a monolithic fashion with the rest of the circuitry on semiconducting materials such as Silicon, GaAs or InP. These antennas, despite their planar character and low cost, suffer from high surface-wave excitation resulting in compromised efficiency, reduced bandwidth and degradation of the radiation pattern. Furthermore, in monolithic designs the feed lines share in most chases the same interface with the antennas and lead into parasitic radiation which deforms the antennas pattern and increases cross-talk. During the reporting period, our group has investigated the development of a variety of micromachined as listed below: (1) The antennas are Si micromachined for high efficiency and are excited by a corporate feed network which is packaged on-wafer to achieve reduced parasitic radiation and reduced cross polarization levels. (2) Micromachined antennas fed by a vertically integrated network, which excites the radiation elements by electromagnetic coupling through planar slots printed on the ground plane of the antennas. (3) Micromachined antennas, which can be reconfigured by use of a very fast, very low loss, MEMS switch. (4) Modeling of antenna and circuit structures using time domain multiresolution analysis. The study performed in each of these areas is described in detail in this report.