Multiband micro antenna on silicon substrate

The paper proposes a micromachined antenna on a silicon substrate for Aerospace applications. The research focuses on the feasibility of fabricating antennas using standard fabrication and 3D integration techniques to develop a single chip solution for wideband/multiband communication devices. The antenna reported in this paper is designed to work between 30-150 GHz, for applications of high bandwidth point-to-point communication, radio astronomy and remote sensing for satellites. The antenna is specially developed as a payload for the ESPACENET [1, 2] sensor satellite, which is based around a CubeSat [3] nanosatellite frame. The antenna is designed to operate with the objective being to achieve the smallest implementation with high efficiency, the minimum loss while accomplishing consistent performance over the prescribed range of frequencies. The antenna design fits on a 4mm2 die and has been simulated using MicroStripes, which predicts promising results for 7 different bands over the desired operating range of 30-150 GHz. For a majority of these bands the efficiency of the antenna is within 80-95%, whilst the directivity is 4.5-6.5 dBi and the gain of 2.2-5.5dBi. The radiation patterns for the operating range vary within nominal parameters and had 8-16% bandwidth between the operating ranges.