A Novel mm-Wave Phased Array Antenna with 3600
Coverage for 5G Smartphone Applications
Manoj Stanley1, Yi Huang1,Hanyang Wang2, Hai Zhou2, Ahmed Alieldin1, Sumin Joseph1
1
Department of Electrical Engineering and Electronics, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK, e-mail:
[email protected];
[email protected];
[email protected];
[email protected] 2
Huawei Technology (UK) Co. Ltd, Reading, United Kingdom, email:
[email protected];
[email protected] Abstract— In this paper, a novel capacitive coupled patch sufficient coverage with wide bandwidth. The fabrication
antenna array capable of providing 3600 coverage is proposed. technology used is also complex in certain cases. This work
The design and performance of the antenna element is discussed. focus on developing high gain wide bandwidth antenna arrays
The proposed antenna design is positioned in the mobile phone capable of providing 3600 coverage.
chassis as a set of 4 sub-arrays each with 12 antenna elements to
provide high gain around 27 dBi with each sub-array providing In Section II, the proposed antenna element and its
900 coverage. The antenna array covers the frequency range of operation principle are explained. The antenna array
24-28 GHz which is a promising band for future 5G based configuration and performance is described in Section III.
smartphone services. The antenna array performance is Some conclusions are given in Section IV showing the
evaluated. The proposed antenna exhibits a uniform radiation
pattern with a stable gain when integrated with the mobile phone
achievements of this research and future work directions.
chassis.
II. ANTENNA ELEMENT DESIGN AND PERFORMANCE
Keywords—5G antenna, beam steering, capacitive coupling,
mm-Wave, patch antenna, phased array, smartphone. A. Antenna Element Design
The proposed antenna is a pair of compact capacitive
I. INTRODUCTION coupled patches as shown in Fig. 1. The overall size of the
proposed design is 3.7 mm × 3.25 mm. Rogers RT5880 of a
I N recent years, there has been a shortage of frequency
spectrum below 6 GHz bands and the demand for higher data
rate is rising. The higher frequencies, e.g., the millimeter-
relative dielectric constant 2.2 and loss tangent 0.0009 is used
as the substrate for printed circuit board. The patches are
printed at the top layer of the substrate. The bottom layer of the
wave (mm-Wave) frequency bands above 24 GHz, have been substrate consists of the ground plane. The inner conductor of
suggested as candidates for future 5G smartphone applications, the coaxial probe feed extends from ground plane through the
as the considerably larger bandwidth could be exploited to PCB substrate to reach the top layer feed which capacitive
increase the capacity and enable the users to experience couples the patches.
several-gigabits-per-second data rates for short range high data
rate applications [1]. The frequency band of 24-28 GHz is The capacitive feed helps to reduce the effective patch size.
considered as one of the prospective bands for 5G smartphone The parasitic patch improves the impedance bandwidth for 10
applications. dB return loss compared to a single patch. The width of the
patch is less than Ȝ/2 at 26 GHz.
Employing higher frequencies results in an increase in
free-space path loss. A high gain narrow beam radiation pattern
synthesized by an array consisting of multiple antenna
elements with optimized spacing is a solution to combat the
increased path loss at mm-Wave frequencies. Recently, several
researches are focused on developing mm-Wave arrays at 28
GHz for 5G mobile phone applications. In [2], a mesh type
patch antenna with dual feeds has been developed to achieve
dual polarization around 28 GHz. But the bandwidth achieved
was too narrow and the design was very complicated. A 3600
coverage was also not possible with this design. In [3], a
conventional probe fed patch antenna design was integrated
into mobile phone providing 2700 coverage. The design
achieved 2 GHz around 22 GHz which is not sufficient for 5G
applications. In [4], an SIW based antenna array was proposed
for 900 coverage. The bandwidth was about 2.3 GHz around 28
GHz and complex fabrication technology was used. Therefore, Fig. 1. Proposed antenna element design (All dimensions are in mm).
it can be seen that many of the designs do not provide
978-1-5386-2720-4/17/$31.00 ©2017 IEEE
adequate isolation. Each sub array has 12 antenna elements and
48 antenna elements are used altogether. Each sub array
provides 900 coverage in the theta plane. Hence the four sub
arrays altogether cover the entire 3600 in the theta plane as
shown in Fig. 4.
B. Antenna Array Performance
The antenna array covers the frequency range of 24-28 GHz.
The worst case isolation is around 16 dB between the antenna
elements within the same array. The worst case isolation
between two elements in the adjacent arrays is around 25 dB.
The peak array gain at boresight is around 27 dBi for each sub
array and the pattern beam width is around 8.80 in the phi plane
and 900 in the theta plane. The pattern can be steered in the phi
plane from -600 to 600 using suitable phase shift to each
element as shown in Fig.5.
Fig. 2. (a) Proposed antenna array configuration in mobile phone chassis
with zoomed view; (b) Flipped image of mobile phone chassis to show sub
array C and sub array D; (c) Side view of mobile phone PCB with sub array
topology.
0
-5
Reflection Coefficient (dB)
-10
-15
-20
-25
-30
22 24 26 28 30
Fig. 4. Side view of mobile phone chassis showing 3600 coverage by using
Frequency (GHz) 4 sub arrays.
Fig. 3. Reflection coefficient of proposed antenna element.
B. Antenna Element Performance
The proposed antenna design has 10 dB return loss over the
frequency band of 24-28 GHz, thereby, having a bandwidth of
4 GHz as shown in Fig.3. The antenna has stable gain and
uniform radiation pattern throughout the band of interest with
gain greater than 6.26 dBi. The antenna has a total efficiency
greater than 90% throughout 24-28 GHz.
III. ANTENNA ARRAY CONFIGURATION AND
PERFORMANCE
A. Antenna Array Configuration
The mobile phone chassis is modified to accommodate the
antenna arrays. The three dimensional antenna array
configuration with the capacitive coupled patch antenna
integrated with the mobile phone chassis is shown in Fig. 2.
The proposed arrangement consists of three sub arrays of
proposed antenna elements in different sides of the bottom
edge region in PCB and one sub array at the sides of the top
edge region in PCB. The antenna elements are spaced at a
distance of 6.3 mm which is close to Ȝ/2 at 24 GHz to ensure Fig. 5. Array pattern of 4 sub arrays at different steering angles.
IV. CONCLUSION
A novel and compact capacitive coupled patch antenna has
been proposed at mm-Wave frequencies for future 5G
smartphone applications. The antenna element covers the
frequency range of 24-28 GHz which is a prospective 5G band.
Four sub arrays of 12 antenna elements each providing 900
have been integrated into the mobile phone chassis for
providing 3600 coverage. The antenna array achieved a high
gain of 27 dBi in the boresight. The proposed antenna
exhibited a stable gain and uniform radiation pattern
throughout the intended frequency band. The proposed antenna
array configuration has proved to be a strong candidate for
future 5G mobile phone services.
REFERENCES
[1] J. G. Andrews et al., ``What will 5G be?'' IEEE J. Sel. Areas
Commun.,vol. 32, no. 6, pp. 1065-1082, Jun. 2014.
[2] W. Hong, K.-H. Baek, Y. Lee, Y. Kim, and S.-T. Ko, ``Study and
prototyping of practically large-scale mmWave antenna systems for 5G
cellular devices,'' IEEE Commun. Mag., vol. 52, no. 9, pp. 63-69, Sep.
2014.
[3] Naser Ojaroudiparchin, Ming Shen, Shuai Zhang, and Gert Frølund
Pedersen, “A Switchable 3D-Coverage Phased Array Antenna Package
for 5G Mobile Terminals”, IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation
Letters, Vol 15, 2016.
[4] S.-J. Park, D.-H. Shin, and S.-O. Park, ‘‘Low side-lobe
substrateintegrated-waveguide antenna array using broadband unequal
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