Improvement of integrated dipole antenna performance using diamond for intra-chip wireless interconnection

In this paper, a 2mm-long linear on-chip dipole antenna pair on Si substrate is analyzed and simulated to investigate the transmission characteristics using Ansoft's HFSS. By inserting a 0.35mm thick diamond layer between substrate and heat sink, the obtained transmission gain of antenna pair with 1mm separation on 10 Ohm-cm Si substrate increases by 9dB at 20GHz. The effect of the dielectric materials, diamond thickness, substrate resistivity and the separation of an antenna pair on the transmission gain has been investigated. The results indicate that thinner diamond layer along with high resistivity substrate is preferred. A modified propagation model involving a diamond layer is also evaluated to make antenna performance predictable in real wireless interconnection systems.