Theory of Microbump Antennas for Broadside Radiation

Abstract

A theory based on the cavity and sphere models is developed to analyze microbump antennas for broadside radiation. The theory enables the computation of all the properties of microbump antenna and provides physical insight into the mechanism of microbump antenna. The theory is successfully demonstrated with experiments and full-wave simulations of a 3 GHz microbump antenna. Results indicates that the performance of the microbump antenna is better than that of the microstrip antenna. The proposed theory favorably guides the design and analysis of a 300 GHz microbump antenna, achieving a significant improvement in radiation efficiency. It is shown that the microbump antenna is a promising candidate for an antenna-on-chip (AoC) solution to a highly integrated system operating at sub-terahertz frequencies for wireless communication, sensing, imaging, etc.