Integrated active antennas on silicon

Integrated active antennas have been designed, fabricated, and used as low-cost front-ends for sensor and communication applications in the frequency bands around 61 and 76.5 GHz allocated for industrial and vehicular applications. The active antenna concept, i.e. the spatial integration of antenna and active element, results in minimization of the required chip size, high reproducibility, and, thus, low costs. The design of active millimeter wave antennas with respect to the impedance matching of antenna and active element as well as the radiation characteristics is discussed. The fabrication process on high resistivity silicon substrates is presented. Application of these front-ends in radar and communication systems is demonstrated.