A Graphene-based multiband MIMO antenna for high performance terahertz applications

Abstract In this work, the design and performance analysis of a graphene material-based multiband terahertz antenna is presented, which is then extended to a two-port MIMO system. The proposed antenna utilizes graphene material to provide the best resonance properties. A parametric study was conducted to determine the effect of the substrate material, substrate height, and chemical potential on the resonance frequencies, and an optimized design with values of silicon dioxide (SiO 2 ) substrate and 6.56 μm and 0.8 eV for the chemical potential of graphene material, respectively, was obtained. The optimized antenna achieves an excellent impedance match of a Voltage Standing Wave Ratio of less than 2 across 8.35 THz, 8.96 THz, and 9.6 THz operating bands, with maximum gain of 3.78 dBi, 3.49 dBi, and 6.26 dBi, respectively, and a compact antenna size of 50 × 132 × 6.56 μm 3 . An equivalent circuit model is also designed and verified with ADS to check the suggested antenna design’s accuracy. This significantly expands system capacity and data rates through the transition to a two-port MIMO configuration, with an optimized inter-element distance to achieve a balance between isolation and compactness. The recommended MIMO antenna demonstrates excellent performance with an ECC &lt; 0.5 and DG <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" overflow="scroll"> <mml:mo>≈</mml:mo> </mml:math> 10 dB, over the entire tuning range. These results indicate that the graphene-based patch is suitable for THz applications, within the specified frequency range. Finally, fabrication challenges of the graphene-based THz antennas at high frequencies are discussed, as well as future perspectives.