400 GHz 8×1 Transmitter and Receiver Front-Ends with Metastructured On-Chip Antennas

This paper highlights two 8×1 transmitter and receiver front-ends which are individually composed of two in-parallel assembled four-channel submillimeter-wave monolithic integrated circuits (S-MMICs) operating at 400 GHz. These S-MMICs integrate frequency multipliers, mixers, and amplifiers as well as on-chip antennas. They are manufactured on a 35 nm metamorphic high-electron-mobility transistor technology. The included to-the-broadside radiating on-chip antennas allow for simplified assembly on a printed circuit board upon which two 4×1 transmitter or receiver S-MMICs are placed in parallel. Furthermore, a separate multiplier-by-four is integrated allowing for a low-frequency input drive in the range from 22.50 to 26.25 GHz. The operational frequency range of the front-ends is from 360 to 420 GHz. Both on-wafer and front-end level measurements are shown, including the farfield pattern characterization of the respective metastructure-based on-chip antennas. With all eight channels of the transmitter front-end active, a radiated output power of at least 10 mW is achieved for the frequency range from 390 to 420 GHz setting the state-of-the-art.