Miniaturized, low power, wireless transmitter and receiver with on-chip antenna, and wireless coupling of on-chip and off-chip antenna
First Claim
1. A Radio Frequency (RF) transmitter system comprising:
- a substrate of a multilayer package supporting a monolithically integrated circuit (chip) comprising an RF transmitter comprising an on-chip loop antenna, wherein the loop antenna is placed symmetrically near edges of the chip and active circuitry of the RF transmitter is placed within the loop antenna;
a ground plane overlying the on-chip loop antenna;
a superstrate of the multilayer package carrying a patch antenna overlying the ground plane and spaced therefrom by a gap; and
an aperture defined in the ground plane overlying the chip, with the loop antenna aligned to edges of the aperture, for near field electromagnetic coupling of the on-chip antenna and the patch antenna.
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Accused Products
Abstract
A miniaturized, low power RF transmitter with a dual mode active on-chip antenna/inductor is disclosed in which antenna also serves as the oscillator inductor. Also disclosed is a miniaturized low power RF receiver with an on-chip antenna; and a RF transmitter system wherein an on-chip antenna is wirelessly coupled to an off chip patch antenna are disclosed. Advantageously, the TX chip is housed in a low loss, e.g. Low Temperature Co-fired Ceramic (LTCC) package with a patch antenna to provide a System-on-Package implementation comprising electromagnetic coupling between a RF TX chip comprising an integrated on-chip antenna and a package antenna. The on-chip antenna feeds the LTCC patch antenna through aperture coupling, thus negating the need for RF buffer amplifiers, matching elements, baluns, bond wires and package transmission lines, and significantly increases the gain and range of the module with respect to the on-chip antenna alone, without deterioration of the circuit performance and power consumption. Exemplary embodiments are disclosed which may be fabricated using standard CMOS technology, for operation in the 5 GHz U-NII band for applications such as miniaturized, low cost, low power wireless devices and sensor systems.
18 Citations
20 Claims
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1. A Radio Frequency (RF) transmitter system comprising:
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a substrate of a multilayer package supporting a monolithically integrated circuit (chip) comprising an RF transmitter comprising an on-chip loop antenna, wherein the loop antenna is placed symmetrically near edges of the chip and active circuitry of the RF transmitter is placed within the loop antenna; a ground plane overlying the on-chip loop antenna; a superstrate of the multilayer package carrying a patch antenna overlying the ground plane and spaced therefrom by a gap; and an aperture defined in the ground plane overlying the chip, with the loop antenna aligned to edges of the aperture, for near field electromagnetic coupling of the on-chip antenna and the patch antenna. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)
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11. A radio frequency (RF) transmitter comprising:
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a monolithically integrated circuit (chip comprising a semiconductor substrate having fabricated thereon an RF oscillator transmitter (TX) circuit comprising an on-chip antenna, wherein the RF oscillator TX circuit comprises a direct feed, open loop voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) TX, wherein a feed line of the oscillator is directly modulated by an input signal; an off-chip antenna and a common ground plane comprising an aperture aligned to the on-chip antenna and the off-chip antenna; and the on-chip antenna being configured as a dual mode active antenna wherein; the on-chip antenna is inductive and acts as VCO tank inductor of the RF oscillator transmitter circuit; and
the on-chip antenna is placed symmetrically on the semiconductor substrate extending close to edges of the semiconductor substrate free from active circuitry and active circuitry of the RF oscillator transmitter circuit is placed within an area defined by the on-chip antenna, to provide a far field radiation pattern for short range transmission and to act as source for near field aperture coupling to the off-chip antenna for extended range transmission. - View Dependent Claims (12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20)
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Specification