Custom-Designed Electrically Small Huygens Dipole Antennas Achieve Efficient, Directive Emissions Into Air When Mounted on a High Permittivity Block

Abstract

System-on-Chip (SoC) applications include embedded systems and mobile computing platforms. They will play major roles in fifth generation (5G) wireless systems, notably with the many associated IoT (internet-of-things) devices. Their wireless functions are enabled, for example, by on-chip antennas (OCAs), i.e., the system elements that connect them to devices in their external environments. These antennas generally reside on a high permittivity dielectric, such as silicon, which unfortunately causes most of their emitted power to be directed into the dielectric rather than into free space. This feature is quite detrimental, i.e., it leads to a severe degradation of an OCA's radiation efficiency as a transmitter of information to an external receiver and similarly to its poor performance as a receiver since little of its pattern resides in free space, severely limiting its ability to capture power from an external transmitter. Similar issues exist for sensors and communication devices residing on a human body. While many integrated antenna styles have been developed in attempts to deal with these issues, their complexities and remaining inefficiencies remain a bottleneck to their widespread adoption. It is demonstrated analytically and numerically that Huygens radiating systems provide a unique solution to these high permittivity substrate problems. Custom-designed electrically small Huygens dipole antennas that lie on the interface between air and a high permittivity block are reported that efficiently emit the majority of their radiated power into the air region rather than into the dielectric.

Keywords

• Directivity
• electrically small antennas
• Huygens dipole antennas
• on-body antennas
• on-chip antennas