Assessment on the bandwidth of artificial magnetic conductors for antenna-on-chip applications

Artificial magnetic conductors (AMCs) received a lot of attention for Antenna-on-Chip applications. Two different methodologies can be identified in the current research on AMCs for Antenna-on-Chip; the AMC is either fully constructed in the metal stack, or the lossy silicon substrate is included in the AMC design. In this paper, an equation is derived to calculate the fractional bandwidth (BW) of these two different methodologies. It is shown that for the upper region in the mm-wave spectrum, the acquired fractional BW, when constructing the AMC fully in the metal stack, seems promising. However, in the lower region of the mm-wave spectrum, the acquired fractional BW is rather poor and the lossy silicon substrate has to be included. The trade-off between acquired fractional BW and induced losses in the lossy silicon substrate is visualized as well.