Antennas on-chip are a particular type of radiating elements valued for their small footprint. They are most commonly integrated in circuit boards to electromagnetically interface free space, which is necessary for wireless communications. Antennas on-chip radiate and receive electromagnetic (EM) energy as any conventional antennas, but what distinguishes them is their miniaturized size. This means they can be integrated inside electronic devices. Although on-chip antennas have a limited range, they are suitable for cell phones, tablet computers, headsets, global positioning system (GPS) devices, and WiFi and WLAN routers. Typically, on-chip antennas are handicapped by narrow bandwidth (less than 10%) and low radiation efficiency. This survey provides an overview of recent techniques and technologies investigated in the literature, to implement high performance on-chip antennas for millimeter-waves (mmWave) and terahertz (THz) integrated-circuit (IC) applications. The technologies discussed here include metamaterial (MTM), metasurface (MTS), and substrate integrated waveguides (SIW). The antenna designs described here are implemented on various substrate layers such as Silicon, Graphene, Polyimide, and GaAs to facilitate integration on ICs. Some of the antennas described here employ innovative excitation mechanisms, for example comprising open-circuited microstrip-line that is electromagnetically coupled to radiating elements through narrow dielectric slots. This excitation mechanism is shown to suppress surface wave propagation and reduce substrate loss. Other techniques described like SIW are shown to significantly attenuate surface waves and minimise loss. Radiation elements based on the MTM and MTS inspired technologies are shown to extend the effective aperture of the antenna without compromising the antenna’s form factor. Moreover, the on-chip antennas designed using the above technologies exhibit significantly improved impedance match, bandwidth, gain and radiation efficiency compared to previously used technologies. These features make such antennas a prime candidate for mmWave and THz on-chip integration. This review provides a thorough reference source for specialist antenna designers.

In this article, a compact coplanar waveguide (CPW) technique based ultra-wideband multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) antenna is proposed. The design is characterized by a broad impedance bandwidth starting from 3 GHz to 11 GHz. The overall size of the MIMO design is $60\times60$ mm ² ( $1.24\times 1.24\,\,\lambda _{g}^{2}$ @ 3 GHz) with a thickness of 1.6 mm. To make the design ultra-wideband, the proposed MIMO antenna design has four jug-shaped radiating elements. The design is printed on a FR-4 substrate (relative permittivity of $\varepsilon _{r} = 4.4$ and loss tangent of $\mathrm {tan}\delta = 0.025$ ). The polarization diversity phenomenon is realized by placing four antenna elements orthogonally. This arrangement increases the isolation among the MIMO antenna elements. The simulated results of the ultra-wideband MIMO antenna are verified by measured results. The proposed MIMO antenna has a measured diversity gain greater than 9.98, envelope correlation coefficient (ECC) less than 0.02, and good MIMO performance where the isolation is more than −20dB between the elements. The group delay, channel capacity loss (CCL), and the total active reflection coefficient (TARC) multiplexing efficiency and mean effective gain results are also analyzed. The group delay is found to be less than 1.2ns, CCL values calculated to be less than 0.4 bits/sec/Hz, while the TARC is below −10dB for the whole operating spectrum. The proposed design is a perfect candidate for ultra-wideband wireless communication systems and portable devices.

Antennas in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are characterized by the enhanced capacity of the network, longer range of transmission, better spatial reuse, and lower interference. In this paper, we propose a planar patch antenna for mobile communication applications operating at 1.8, 3.5, and 5.4 GHz. A planar microstrip patch antenna (MPA) consists of two F-shaped resonators that enable operations at 1.8 and 3.5 GHz while operation at 5.4 GHz is achieved when the patch is truncated from the middle. The proposed planar patch is printed on a low-cost FR-4 substrate that is 1.6 mm in thickness. The equivalent circuit model is also designed to validate the reflection coefficient of the proposed antenna with the S₁₁ obtained from the circuit model. It contains three RLC (resistor–inductor–capacitor) circuits for generating three frequency bands for the proposed antenna. Thereby, we obtained a good agreement between simulation and measurement results. The proposed antenna has an elliptically shaped radiation pattern at 1.8 and 3.5 GHz, while the broadside directional pattern is obtained at the 5.4 GHz frequency band. At 1.8, 3.5, and 5.4 GHz, the simulated peak realized gains of 2.34, 5.2, and 1.42 dB are obtained and compared to the experimental peak realized gains of 2.22, 5.18, and 1.38 dB at same frequencies. The results indicate that the proposed planar patch antenna can be utilized for mobile applications such as digital communication systems (DCS), worldwide interoperability for microwave access (WiMAX), and wireless local area networks (WLAN).

In this paper, an automated impedance matching circuit is proposed to match the impedance of the transmit and receive resonators for optimum wireless power transfer (WPT). This is achieved using a 2D open-circuited spiral antenna with magnetic resonance coupling in the low-frequency ISM band at 13.56 MHz. The proposed WPT can be adopted for a wide range of commercial applications, from electric vehicles to consumer electronics, such as tablets and smartphones. The results confirm a power transfer efficiency between the transmit and receive resonant circuits of 92%, with this efficiency being sensitive to the degree of coupling between the coupled pair of resonators.

A low form-factor design of an eight-element antenna array is presented for 5G mm-wave MIMO applications. The design features modified circular patch radiators that achieve an impedance bandwidth of 2.6 GHz, covering frequencies from 37.7 to 40.3 GHz. The radiating elements are strategically arranged on opposite sides of a common substrate and interleaved to significantly reduce mutual coupling between adjacent elements. This innovative technique effectively minimizes coupling between the array’s radiators without the need of a decoupling structure. The MIMO antenna is fabricated on a low-loss Rogers-5880 substrate, with a thickness of 0.8 mm, a dielectric constant of 2.2, and a loss tangent of 0.0009, ensuring minimal signal loss and confirming the accuracy of simulation results. The inter-element isolation exceeds 25 dB, and the array provides a gain greater than 6 dBi, with a peak gain of 7.5 dBi at 39 GHz. This high gain enhances the antenna’s ability to mitigate atmospheric attenuation at higher frequencies, making it highly suitable for 5G mm-wave applications.