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In this article, a densely integrated and unified paralleled amplifier and antenna architecture is proposed and demonstrated for next-generation millimeter-wave (mmW) and terahertz (THz) front-end modules. It makes use of topologically paralleled transistors cohabitated within a compact rectangular patch antenna (CRPA) as a unified cell. This design simultaneously amplifies and radiates power without resorting to any power divider, input and output matching networks, or power combiner whatsoever, therefore, greatly reducing front-end loss, size, and complexity. Then, the unified unit cell is self-consistently distributed to form a unified planar array with active elements between array elements as power feeders. In this demonstration, the input power is sequentially amplified, radiated through each array element, and spatially added up, resulting in low on-board circuit losses and efficient radiation. In this article, we investigate and present challenges and early results of implementing this unification concept of active circuitry and antenna at mmW frequencies. Using a standard 65-nm CMOS process, a set of chips were designed, fabricated, and tested under different amplifier biasing conditions at 146 GHz for experimental demonstration. The realized low-loss, matched, and compact unified prototypes have demonstrated an amplified radiation, with power enhancement of 3.4 dB through single element and 6 dB through $2 \times 2$ layout compared to their respective passive counterparts. Moreover, frequency tuning is observed varying drain bias and self-matching is improved with increasing gate bias. Therefore, the feasibility of a unique feature in the architectural implementation of low-loss, compact, and densely integrated and topologically cohabitated mmW and THz front-end modules is confirmed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An integrated low-temperature co-fired ceramic (LTCC) coupled resonator decoupling network (CRDN) for two coupled antennas is proposed in this paper. By virtue of LTCC technology, a second-order CRDN is realized by two tightly coupled lumped-element resonators in a volume of \3.2\times \2.5\times \1.2\ \mm^3. Theoretical analysis has revealed that a wide range of mutual admittance of a CRDN can be realized by choosing appropriate I/O coupling elements while the coupled resonators can be consolidated in an LTCC device. This “one-fit-all” feature allows for decoupling a wide range of coupled antennas with different form factors for a given frequency band. To prove the concept, two LTCC CRDNs for decoupling different forms of antennas working in the 2.45-GHz band are designed, fabricated, and tested. Measurement results have demonstrated that significant improvement in isolation can be achieved within a wide operating frequency range in all cases. The presented design theory and circuit topology are general and can be applied to both symmetric and asymmetric two-element antenna arrays. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]