Wireless NoCs Using Directional and Substrate Propagation Antennas

Abstract

Wireless Network-on-Chip (WNoCs) are introduced to improve the performance for long distance communication within a chip. The on-chip antennas utilized in these WNoCs can be omni-directional or bi-directional, broadcasting to every receiving antenna or directional only in a specific pairing, respectively. There are positives and negatives for both types of antennas, although bi-directional antennas that do not cross paths have the added benefit of decreasing the possibility of interference. This work analyzes the performance of a WNoC with bi-directional antennas that uses an innovative substrate propagation technique recently introduced in literature. Antennas that use substrate propagation are capable of longer distance communication compared to typical on-chip antennas that use surface propagation. It is shown that by using the substrate propagation technique, wireless NoCs with minimal bi-directional antennas can reduce the number of wireless nodes by 66% while achieving similar performance of within ±5% of throughput.