Planar 0.05–1.1 THz Laminate-Based Transition Designs for Integrating High-Frequency Photodiodes With Rectangular Waveguides

Compact planar laminate-based transitions for integrating high-frequency photodiodes (PDs) with rectangular waveguides (WRs) are presented for the WR15 to WR1 standard waveguide bands, i.e., from 0.05 THz up to 1.1 THz. The transitions couple the optically generated (e.g., via heterodyning) millimeter-wave or terahertz signals from the grounded coplanar waveguide (GCPW) output of the PD chip to the WR. To our knowledge, this is the first scalable integration concept that enables hermetic photodiode packaging up to the terahertz frequency range. For the WR15-WR6 bands, all transitions are designed on ultrathin microfiber reinforced PTFE composites (127-μm Rogers RT/duroid 5880 laminate). For the WR5-WR2.2 and the WR1.5-WR1 bands, liquid crystalline polymer ULTRALAM 3850 laminates are used with a thickness of 50 and 25 μm, respectively. The proposed GCPW-WR transition design is based on a double-slot antenna structure and enables the development of fully hermetic photonic packages, which is required to improve the durability of the PD chip. The transition designs are optimized by systematic EM-wave propagation modeling for achieving a wide operational bandwidth of up to 30% of the respective center frequency for each WR band. The optimized transitions exhibit an average insertion loss of about 1.5 dB and a return loss of about 10 dB for all waveguide bands (WR15-WR1). Based upon the systematic numerical modeling, generic guidelines are developed that allow designing a specific transition for any given waveguide band to 1.1 THz. In addition to the numerical analysis, GCPW-WR12 transitions for E-band (60-90 GHz) operation are fabricated and integrated with InP-based balanced-PD chips and GaAs HEMT MMIC medium power amplifiers in a fully hermetic package. Furthermore, hermetic WR12 coherent photonic mixer (CPX) modules are developed. The packaged WR12-type CPX allows direct optical-to-wireless conversion of optical baseband or IF-band signals, e.g., for radio-over-fiber fronthauling in mobile communications. The WR12-CPX module provides RF output power of up to +15 dB·m at 77.5 GHz.