All-Silicon Terahertz Planar Horn Antenna

Abstract

In this letter, we propose an integrated all-silicon 2-D horn antenna operating over 220 to 330 GHz (WR-3 band). This endfire antenna is designed for full integration with a substrateless all-dielectric terahertz frontend. The antenna supports two orthogonal fundamental modes of guided waves with in-plane and out-of-plane polarizations. By introducing a 2-D effective-medium dielectric lens on the same platform, the antenna realized gain together with the free-space impedance matching is enhanced allowing for a broadband operation with a fractional impedance bandwidth of 40% on a compact footprint. The fabricated antenna is experimentally validated with measured realized gain ranging from 11.2 to 14.2 dBi for the in-plane polarization and 10.5–15.0 dBi for the out-of-plane polarization across the entire WR-3 band. We foresee that this all-dielectric horn antenna together with the integrated highly efficient platform can be adopted in beyond 5G communications.