Concurrent On-Chip Dual-Mode Substrate-Integrated Waveguide for Sub-THz Applications

This letter presents a dual-mode substrate-integrated waveguide (SIW) operating in the D band (110–170GHz). The structure is fabricated using standard CMOS-compatible nanofabrication technology. The fundamental and the first higher order mode are concurrently excited with a large bandwidth covering the entire D band (110–170 GHz) while maintaining low insertion loss (2.4 dB/mm) and significant isolation (>40 dB). This doubles the data rate the SIW can support for the same silicon area. The structure is fabricated and experimentally validated, demonstrating better than 10-dB matching over the entire D band. The measurement results agree well with full-wave electromagnetic simulations.