Advanced Packaging Solutions for mm-Wave Applications

In the last years, the increasing demand for ever higher data rates in wireless communication has exposed the limits of current sub-6GHz communication systems and pushed the technology towards the exploration of the mm-wave frequency spectrum. Systems operating at mm-wave have to cope with much higher free space losses than in the sub-6GHz frequency range. Moreover, the physical size of interconnects (eg chip-to-chip or chip-to-antenna) becomes comparable to the operating wavelength. Therefore, new packaging technologies are required, which also allow implementing large antenna arrays for massive MIMO and short interconnects to minimize package losses. The presentation will introduce advanced packaging solutions suitable for RF and mm-wave applications, eg flip chip and interposer solutions, fan-out wafer level packaging or chiplet approaches. This presentation also addresses topics such as antenna-in-package solutions, shielding on package level, passive component integration or heterogeneous integration of III/V semiconductors with Si or SiGe in one package.