Integrated Vivaldi plasmonic antenna for wireless on-chip optical communications

In this paper we propose a novel hybrid optical plasmonic Vivaldi antenna for operation in the standard C telecommunication band for wavelengths in the 1550 nm range. The antenna is fed by a silicon waveguide and is designed to have high gain and large bandwidth. The shape of the radiation pattern, with a main lobe along the antenna axis, makes this antenna suitable for point-to-point connections for inter- or intra-chip optical communications. Direct port-to-port short links for different connection distances and in a homogeneous environment have also been simulated to verify, by comparing the results of a full-wave simulation with the Friis transmission equation, the correctness of the antenna parameters obtained via near-to-far field transformation.