Impact of Process Tolerances on the Performance of Bond Wire Antennas at RF/Microwave Frequencies

Due to the multitude of advantages bond wire antennas have over conventional planar antennas (especially on-chip planar antennas), they have received much research attention within the last four years. The focus of the contributions made so far has been on exploiting different configurations of single-element and array bond wire antennas for short-range applications at RF/microwave frequencies. However, the effects of process tolerances of bond wires on the radiation characteristics of bond wire antennas have not been studied in published literature. Therefore in this paper, we investigate the impact of up to 20% fluctuations in the parameters of bond wires on the performance of 42 GHz and 60 GHz bond wire antennas. Our results reveal that the length and radius of bond wires are the most and least sensitive parameters, respectively. Furthermore, the severity of the impact of process tolerances depends on the impedance bandwidth of the original antenna, before considering the tolerances. For example, a 10%...