Silicon integrated patch antennas for terahertz imaging applications

Patch antennas for 0.65 THz imaging applications have been implemented in the silicon-oxide backend of a 0.25 μm BiCMOS technology. Integrated transistor-based square-law detectors are used to characterize the co- and cross-polarization radiation patterns of differentially fed patch elements arranged in a 3 × 5 pixel array. Each element of the array provides a ±50 degree E-plane and ±30 degree H-plane beamwidth with a measured pixel-to-pixel variation of less than 2 dB.