Antennas Embedded in CMOS Integrated Circuits
In this work we propose novel integrated antennas for chip-to-chip wireless interconnects. In order to save chip area, the available CMOS circuit ground planes can be used as radiating elements. The interference between the integrated antennas and the on-chip circuit interconnects should be minimised. This can be obtained by introducing a transformer in the antenna feeding network. THE chip-to-chip communication rate is limited by the cross-talk and the dispersion in wired interconnects. It is possible to increase the communication rate is to use advanced coding techniques [1]. Wireless links can also be considered an alternative, as they can provide higher data rates at short distances. Additional advantage of the wireless chip-to-chip networks is the considerable simplification of the system design, as the number of the required on-board connection wires is reduced [2]. RF fr4ont-end circuits in CMOS technology are available in literature [3], so the problem of on-chip antenna integration remains to be solved. Antennas integrated on a silicon substrate have been investigated in literature [4–6], but they require additional chip area. In order to save chip area we propose to use the same on-chip structures both for antenna electrodes and for electronic circuit elements. This can be obtained by cutting into patches the top-most CMOS metallisation layer, which is used as a circuit ground plane, and use this patches as antenna electrodes