Principal Investigator: Dr. Andreas Rennings, UDE

Achieved results and methods & Internal collaborations

Initially, we focused on a fundamental understanding and corresponding separation of radiative and dissipative losses within typical on-chip structures [1]. With the corresponding advanced equivalent circuit modelling we had a powerful tool to investigate efficient radiators. One technique for increased efficiency is based on gap-discontinuities along a half-wavelength [1] or quarter-wavelength [3] resonant structure, depending on available chip size. In [3] we proposed a concept for broadband operation, which relies on a frequency-selective usage of several coupled antenna sections with slightly different resonances, besides the circular-polarization (CP), appropriate for the mobile scenarios we aim for in MARIE.

The multi-resonant CP-antenna shown in Fig. 1 shows a group delay dispersion. In [2] we investigated its influence on the radar imaging performance and proposed a compensation technique. Thus, the novel on-chip antenna has also been utilized in C03’s larger MIMO radar system. The results above [1-3] originated from a fruitful C03-C05 collaboration and fully answer our main research questions raised for the 2^nd phase. The published measured data has been obtained with our spherical on-wafer mm-wave system [7], which was extended by two functionalities during the 2^nd phase, namely, the electronically controlled receiver polarization, important for CP-measurements [3], and a novel upside-down on-wafer-probing. Both solutions are not available commercially for frequencies of our interest. Finally, the following additional joint activities are worth to be mentioned: In [4] a completely integrated FMCW radar transceiver operating around 480 GHz, a leaky-wave antenna on InP [5] and a MEMS-based reflect array [6] have been published, respectively. Here we supported our MARIE partners (C03, C04, C06, C07, C12, S01) with antenna designs, S-parameter and far-field measurements, respectively.

Selected project-related publications

[1] B. Sievert, J. T. Svejda, J. Wittemeier, N. Pohl, D. Erni and A. Rennings, "Equivalent Circuit Model Separating Dissipative and Radiative Losses for the Systematic Design of Efficient Microstrip-Based On-Chip Antennas," in IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques, vol. 69, no. 2, pp. 1282-1294, Feb. 2021, doi: 10.1109/TMTT.2020.3040453.

[2] J. Wittemeier, B. Sievert, M. Dedic, D. Erni, A. Rennings and N. Pohl, "The Impact of Group Delay Dispersion on Radar Imaging With Multiresonant Antennas," in IEEE Microwave and Wireless Components Letters, vol. 32, no. 3, pp. 241-244, March 2022, doi: 10.1109/LMWC.2021.3128281.

[3] B. Sievert, J. Wittemeier, J. T. Svejda, N. Pohl, D. Erni and A. Rennings, "Bandwidth-Enhanced Circularly Polarized mm-Wave Antenna With On-Chip Ground Plane," in IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, vol. 70, no. 10, pp. 9139-9148, Oct. 2022, doi: 10.1109/TAP.2022.3184539.

[4] D. Starke, J. Bott, F. Vogelsang, B. Sievert, J. Barowski, C. Schulz, H. Rücker, A. Rennings, D. Erni, I. Rolfes, N. Pohl “A compact and fully integrated 0.48 THz FMCW radar transceiver combined with a dielectric lens,” International Journal of Microwave and Wireless Technologies, pp. 1–12, 2023. doi:10.1017/S1759078723001368.

[5] P. Lu, T. Haddad, B. Sievert, B. Khani, S. Makhlouf, S. Dülme, J. F. Estévez, A. Rennings, D. Erni, U. Pfeiffer, and A. Stöhr, "InP-Based THz Beam Steering Leaky-Wave Antenna," in IEEE Transactions on Terahertz Science and Technology, vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 218-230, March 2021, doi: 10.1109/TTHZ.2020.3039460.

[6] X. Liu, L. Schmitt, B. Sievert, C. Geng, K. Kolpatzeck, D. Erni, A. Rennings, J. C. Balzer, M. Hoffmann, A. Czylwik, "Terahertz Beam Steering Using a MEMS-Based Reflectarray Configured by a Genetic Algorithm," in IEEE Access, vol. 10, pp. 84458-84472, 2022, doi: 10.1109/ACCESS.2022.3197202.

[7] B. Sievert, J. T. Svejda, D. Erni and A. Rennings, "Spherical mm-Wave/THz Antenna Measurement System," in IEEE Access, vol. 8, pp. 89680-89691, 2020, doi: 10.1109/ACCESS.2020.2993698.

[8] B. Sievert, J. Wittemeier, J. T. Svejda, N. Pohl, D. Erni and A. Rennings, "Coaxial Cable-Based Magnetic and Electric Near-Field Probes to Measure On-Chip Components up to 330 GHz," in IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters, vol. 22, no. 10, pp. 2472-2476, Oct. 2023, doi: 10.1109/LAWP.2023.3291571.

[9] Z. Tian, M. Zhang, H. Yuan, B. Sievert, M. Eube, P. Hildenhagen, H. G. Roskos, D. Erni, and A. Rennings, "Experimental Evaluation of a Subharmonic Detector and Corresponding 1-D Array Concept at 300 GHz," 2023 53rd European Microwave Conference (EuMC), Berlin, Germany, 2023, pp. 74-77, doi: 10.23919/EuMC58039.2023.10290439.

[10] Z. Tian, M. Zhang, S. Ma, B. Sievert, H. Yuan, D. Lederer, J. P. Raskin, H. G. Roskos, D. Erni, and A. Rennings, "The Concept of a Large-scale Subharmonic Coherent Detector Array at 600 GHz," 2023 Asia-Pacific Microwave Conference (APMC), Taipei, Taiwan, 2023, pp. 470-472, doi: 10.1109/APMC57107.2023.10439844. Best Paper Award.