Description
The 5G wireless era will predominantly revolutionize fields like telecommunication, autonomous driving, healthcare, virtual reality and Internet of Things (IoT). It supersedes its predecessor 4G in terms of high data throughput and reduced hardware footprint owing to its high frequency spectrums. Backed up with Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO), beamforming and beam steering technologies, the communication system can be made energy efficient. Microstrip antennas could be a suitable choice owing to their low profile, conformability, ruggedness, and economical fabrication technology. However, to combat propagation loss at 5G, array antennas with high gain are desired. 5G massive MIMO planar antenna of 4 × 8 array size at 32.6 GHz (31.8 GHz to 33.4 GHz) for a base station application is proposed. It offers high gain directive beams, flexible radiation patterns and beam steering in 3D space. A linearly polarized traveling wave series fed microstrip patch antenna of 1 × 16 array size is designed as an elementary block to operate in 28 GHz band (27.5 GHz to 28.35 GHz) using thru-element technology. Utilizing the elementary blocks, access point design with two 4 × 16 arrays is proposed, which are arranged in an orthogonal arrangement on the same substrate panel with common ground. Two arrays serve as transmit and receive antennas and find application in simultaneous transmit and receive (STAR) communication system. Similarly, 8 × 16 antenna array configuration is designed to serve as a 5G base station at the 28GHz band (27.5 GHz to 28.35 GHz). Both the configurations offer high gain 1D beam steering and digital beamforming (DBF) based multiple beams generation, enabling them to harness 5G MIMO technology. RF beamforming network at S-band (2 GHz- 4 GHz) is discussed. It can be implemented with either 2 × 2 planar antenna array or 1 × 4 linear antenna array operating in S-band. Components-off-the-shelf (COTS) like low noise amplifiers (LNA), phase shifters, dual in-line package (DIP) switches, surface mount resistors, inductors, and capacitors were utilized to build the board. Grounded co-planar waveguide (GCPW) 4:1 Wilkinson power combiner was designed using Ansys HFSS. The multi-layer PCB was designed using Altium Designer.
