Design of a 1-to-4 Subarray Element for Wireless Subharmonic Injection in the THz Band

This paper presents an on-chip 1 to 4 subarray element for wireless subharmonic injection (WSI) in the context of antenna-in-antenna THz oscillators. The proposed antenna receives the third-order subharmonic injection signal (SIS) at 100 GHz from one side and radiates the 300 GHz fundamental oscillation signal (FOS) to the opposite side, which performs like a subharmonic transmitarray. Each element is consisted of a single SIS receiving antenna (Receiver antenna, RA) connected with a 2×2 FOS array (Transmitter antenna, TA). By positioning more FOS antenna around the single SIS antenna, the element spacing at 300 GHz is shorted within one wavelength which inhibits the grating lobe. Through tuning the distance of the FOS array element, the surface wave in the thick indium phosphide (InP) substrate is also reduced to some degree. The simulation results show that the maximum radiation efficiency of the designed chip antenna structure is better than 50% in both the 100 GHz and the 300 GHz band. The conjugate impedance matching in the dual-band is achieved according to the active element requirement. Utilizing the antenna proposed in this work, a low injection loss is verified in the periodical boundary based WSI simulation.