A Millimeterwave Microstrip Antenna with Micromachined Wafer-Level Stacking Structure

This paper presents a silicon-micromachined microstrip antenna in which both feeding power and ground interconnection are performed along the vertical direction of the substrate at the wafer level. The antenna has a stacked structure consisting of a patch antenna substrate and a feed substrate. The structure possesses the following novel points: (i) it satisfies both optimum design and ease of wafer handling in the fabrication process; (ii) the ground plane intervened in the microstrip antenna is interconnected by through-wafer vias. The measured radiation patterns of the developed antenna at an 80-GHz band showed good agreement with the designed patterns. This newly developed technology can be utilized for wafer-level stacking to achieve a compact array antenna in the millimeterwave range.