Bond Wire Antenna/Feed for Operation Near 60 GHz

A bond wire antenna/feed for use near 60 GHz is demonstrated. A gold bond wire with ~1-mil diameter is co-optimized with a bond pad to resonate at ~60 GHz. With a metal cover representing an enclosure for an electronic system (2 mm from a printed circuit board), the antenna pair gain at 10-cm separation is ~ -53 dB including the effects of two nearby bond wires located 300 ¿m away. This is sufficient for building an interchip 1-Gbps radio link with bit error rate of 10
^-12
. Without the metal cover, the range is reduced to ~ 4-5 cm. The bond wire antennas with efficiency of ~30% should also be useful for general purpose over the air communication in the 60-GHz unlicensed band.