Submillimeter-Wave Monolithic Integrated Circuits With Metastructure-Based On-Chip Antennas

Submillimeter-wave frequency bands allow for broadband transmit and receive windows, serviceable to both communications- and radar-based applications, increasing data rates and imaging resolutions, respectively. Due to the small wavelength, singular-chip solutions that combine active chains with corresponding on-chip antennas are highly promoted. Whilst a majority of such solutions are based on silicon-on-insulator complementary metal-oxide semiconductor technology nodes, the limited maximum oscillation frequency restricts the realizable bandwidth. Thus, a fully-integrated transceiver chip processed on a 35-nm InGaAs metamorphic high-electron-mobility transistor technology, with a maximum oscillation frequency of above 850 GHz, is of high interest. To that degree, this work addresses the realization of broadband 400-GHz transmit and receive monolithic-integrated active chains as well as corresponding on-chip antennas. The latter present a novel combination of metastructures with a quartz dielectric resonator and a diamond director plate to realize broadband and broadside radiating on-chip antennas for all back-end-of-line substrate-thickness limited integrated-circuit technologies.