Chip-to-chip RF Communications and Power Delivery via On-chip Antennas

This tutorial provides students with a basic understanding of the challenges involved in designing RF-powered RF-connected integrated circuits (ICs) with on-chip antennas (OCAs). The tutorial begins by discussing the potential cost and performance advantages of creating ICs with OCAs. The design of ICs in which the antenna and conventional circuitry are all fabricated on the same substrate offers advantages in terms of size, weight and cost over conventional RFID/sensor systems in which an IC is assembled onto an antenna substrate; however, it is challenging because the size of the antenna is limited by the die size and its proximity to a resistive ground plane (the IC substrate) both decrease the RF energy that can be harvested to operate the on-chip circuitry. In this Tutorial, we will apply simplifying approximations in order to develop basic equations relating the size and geometry of the antennas to the ability of the OCA-IC to harvest ambient RF energy; and, we will validate those equations with electromagnetic field simulations. The tutorial will also examine the challenging issue of matching the antenna to the on-chip electronics in a way that maximizes the power that can be extracted from an external RF signal. The Tutorial will consider operation across a range of frequencies and will explore both in-plane spiral antennas and out-of-plane helical antennas. The Tutorial will conclude with an analysis of the case when a large array of OCA-ICs are integrated onto a flexible substrate and powered with large loop antennas