Chip-to-Chip Switched Beam 60 GHz Circular Patch Planar Antenna Array and Pattern Considerations

A 60 GHz switched beam chip-to-chip antenna array is introduced. The array consists of four center fed circular patch elements with side vias in a 2×2 grid arrangement forming a planar array. The array is designed to fit on a typical multicore chip for reconfigurable interchip wireless communication. The array main beam is switched by changing the interelement phase shifts in the azimuth plane. The switching of the main beam is analyzed and verified through full-wave simulation. The design presented is an improvement over a previous design of a two-element antenna array. The Friis transmission equation with polarization components taken into account is used to model the interchip wireless link. To verify the model, a transmission coefficient measurement is made between a pair of the two-element arrays separated by a 10 mm distance. Both simulated and measured radiation patterns of the two-element array are presented for use in the Friis equation to calculate the transmission coefficients. Full-wave simulation of the array pair is also performed. The calculated results obtained from the Friis model agree well with both the measured and full-wave simulation results. The Friis model is used to calculate both signal and interference levels.