Professor Zhang Yueping: 5G brings about the trend of Antenna in Package (AiP) technology

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Professor Zhang Yueping: 5G brings about the trend of Antenna in Package (AiP) technology [Copy link]

In the 5G and post-5G mobile world, packaged antenna (AiP) will be everywhere. It will be embedded in your mobile phone as shown in Figure 1, providing you with a new and extraordinary high-quality user experience; it will also be installed in the car you drive as shown in Figure 2 to ensure your safety, stability and smoothness; it will also be used to construct your gesture radar and VR/AR/MR devices as shown in Figure 3, allowing you to get rid of the constraints of wires and achieve an immersive, scene-integrated, and life experience beyond reality.

Figure 1. AiP in Samsung 5G mobile phone

Figure 2: AiP in Intel’s 5G Internet of Vehicles

Figure 3. AiP in Google Gesture Radar

The application of AiP in mobile phones will be epoch-making. We can prove this point from the evolution and development of mobile phone antennas. As we all know, mobile phone antennas began with external ones in the analog era, became internal ones in the digital era, and advanced to integrated ones in the smart era. The integrated ones either added auxiliary functions to the antenna or became an integral part of the mobile phone in terms of structure. The most famous integrated antenna is the metal frame antenna of the Apple mobile phone. It was initially improperly designed, which led to the sensational Apple mobile phone antenna gate incident. The incident forced the great Steve Jobs, the creator of smartphones, to come forward to explain, and Apple made compensation and the incident came to an end. At present, due to the emergence of 5G millimeter waves, the setting of mobile phone antennas has entered the eve of disruptive changes and is developing towards integrated AiP. Figure 4 is my summary of the evolution process of mobile phone antennas and possible development trends. One point I must emphasize about this figure is that integrated and integrated antennas will coexist in mobile phones for a long time now and in the future.

The performance of the antenna will vary greatly due to the appearance design of the mobile phone, the space limitations inside the mobile phone, and the structure or substrate material next to the antenna. Standardized AiP antenna modules may be difficult to meet the different needs of different mobile phone manufacturers. Apple and other manufacturers are expected to develop their own customized AiP antenna modules based on the design of their own mobile phones. It has been calculated that Apple's AiP demand is expected to reach billions of dollars in two and a half years. If Huawei, Samsung, Xiaomi, vivo and OPPO are added, the demand for AiP will be very considerable and is expected to create a new industry! Mobile phone antennas have been transformed by AiP technology, and AiP technology has become famous for its use in mobile phones, complementing each other.

Figure 4: Mobile phone antenna evolution roadmap

Figure 5 is a schematic diagram of the single-chip RF SoC structure envisioned at the beginning of this century. The top of the chip package is integrated with an antenna radiator. The design of the antenna radiator is clever in that it supports differential or single-port SoCs working in the same RF band. The stepped cavity inside the package can accommodate larger SoCs and bond wire interconnections. The package and antenna share a specially designed ground to meet both electrical isolation and mechanical reliability requirements. In addition, the package also supports the use of external antennas for RF chips through solder balls to achieve diversity reception to ensure system performance. Figure 6 is a true industrial AiP realized using LTCC technology. Figure 7 is a promotional photo taken to promote AiP technology at the time.

Figure 5. Schematic diagram of the single-chip RF SoC structure (the black body represents the CMOS chip)

Figure 6: AiP in the true industrial sense realized using LTCC process

Figure 7: Early promotional photos of AiP technology

About the Author

Professor Zhang Yueping is an IEEE Fellow, an IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society Distinguished Lecturer, and a double winner of the Shekunnov Paper Award and the Kraus Antenna Award.