A Sub-Terahertz Broadband Metasurface-Inspired On-Chip Stacked Patch Antenna

In this letter, a metasurface-inspired stacked patch on-chip antenna is proposed in a sub-terahertz band. To enhance the bandwidth and gain, the original on-chip patch is evolved to be stacked with metasurface-inspired patches. Characteristic mode analysis verifies that four adjacent resonance modes are introduced by the proposed structure and excited for achieving a wideband operation with excellent radiation performance. For experimental demonstration, a passive on-chip patch is taped out using the back-end-of-line of a SiGe BiCMOS process and assembled with the superstrate antenna. An impedance bandwidth of 33.6% [(200 to 281) GHz] is measured, and a maximum gain of 3.4 dBi is achieved at 273 GHz with a maximum radiation efficiency of 51.8%. The proposed hybrid on-chip antenna features broadband impedance matching and a high antenna efficiency, which makes it a promising candidate for 6G communication systems.