A Cost-Effective Wideband Switched Beam Antenna System for a Small Cell Base Station

Bantavis, Petros; Kolitsidas, C. I.; Empliouk, Tzichat M.; Roy, Matthieu; Jonsson, B. L. G.; Kyriacou, George A.

doi:10.1109/tap.2018.2874494

Cited by 44 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…All of them carefully investigated co-integrated designs and implementations of an array antenna and Butler matrix. Interestingly, the co-integration would not have been such a critical issue in a much lower few-GHz band as can be confirmed in [ 16 , 17 , 18 ]. It is because in the conventional non-mm-wave band, a simple modular design and connectorized assembly of the building components could be more straightforward and less expensive as the interconnections and integrations of the building components are not so much problematic as in the mm-wave band.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 87%

A 28-GHz Switched-Beam Antenna with Integrated Butler Matrix and Switch for 5G Applications

Lee

Shin

2021

Sensors

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This work presents a 28-GHz Butler matrix based switched-beam antenna for fifth-generation (5G) wireless applications. It integrates a 1 × 4 microstrip antenna, a 4 × 4 Butler matrix, and a single-pole four-throw (SP4T) absorptive switch in a single planar printed circuit board and is housed in a metal enclosure. Co-integration of a packaged switch chip with the Butler matrix based switched-beam antenna greatly enhances the form factor and integration level of the entire system. A wideband two-section branch line coupler is employed to minimize the phase and magnitude errors and variations of the Butler matrix. The aluminum metal enclosure stabilizes the electrical performances, reduces the sidelobes, and improves the structural stability. The fabricated antenna with the metal enclosure assembled has a dimension of 37 × 50 × 6.2 mm3. With an RF input signal fed to the antenna’s input port through a single Ka-band connector, and the switching states chosen by 2-bit dc control voltages, the antenna successfully demonstrates four directional switched beams. The beam switching operations are verified through the over-the-air far-field measurements. The measured results show that the four beam steering directions are −43°, −17°, +10°, +34° with side lobe levels < −5.3 dB at 28 GHz. The antenna also shows reasonably wideband radiation patterns over 27–29 GHz band. The 10-dB impedance bandwidth is 25.4–27.6 GHz, while a slightly relaxed 8-dB bandwidth is 25.2–29.6 GHz. Compared to previous works, this four-directional switched-beam antenna successfully exhibits the advantages of high integration level and satisfactory performances for the 28-GHz 5G wireless applications.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 87%

A 28-GHz Switched-Beam Antenna with Integrated Butler Matrix and Switch for 5G Applications

Lee

Shin

2021

Sensors

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“…A power divider, a 90 ° phase shifter, and a 90 ° bend, provides improved bandwidth performance from 35 GHz to 47 GHz in Reference 134. Next, a 90 ° directional coupler design using a very low capacitance imbalance is designed in Reference 135. The primary characteristic of this coupler is to provide a controllable ripple in the operating range to improve the overall amplitude balance.…”

Section: Wideband Hybrid Couplersmentioning

confidence: 99%

A review of hybrid couplers: State‐of‐the‐art, applications, design issues and challenges

Abdulbari

Rahim

Soh

et al. 2021

Int J Numerical Modelling

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In recent years, the hybrid branch‐line coupler has attracted much attention due to its appealing features such as of low cost and ease in fabrication for wireless communications. The fifth‐generation cellular networks promise to support several wireless technologies by capitalizing a multitude of frequencies and increase data rates. To achieve that, the butler matrix technique can be used to enhance both bandwidth and data rate with the implementation of beamforming. Conventional hybrid couplers are the main component to build a butler matrix, but they are generally bulky in size and narrow in bandwidth. Moreover, requirements imposed by newer wireless technologies makes the efforts in improving size compactness and bandwidth even more challenging. On the other hand, several techniques have been proposed in literature to solve both issues. This study focuses on the design challenges and issues of hybrid coupler designs and technologies, besides underlining their promising potential. In this context, several techniques for hybrid coupler to achieve the required bandwidth and size reduction are highlighted, such as the T‐shape, meander line, two sections, three‐section, and parallel couple lines.

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“…To achieve the multibeam characteristic, beamforming circuits such as the Butler matrix, the Rotman lens, and the Blass matrix can be fed to the array * Correspondence: tariqlatef@um.edu.my antenna [9][10][11]. The Butler matrix has received much attention due to its low profile, low power dissipation, design simplicity, and cost-effectiveness for large-scale production [12][13][14][15][16]. The Rotman lens suffers high ohmic loss, high power loss within the lens, and high phase error across the aperture, although it is low-profile and cost-effective, and it has wider bandwidth [17,18].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Design and characterization of a compact single-layer multibeam array antennausing an 8×8 Butler matrix for 5G base station applications

Idrus¹,

Latef²,

Aridas³

et al. 2020

Turk J Elec Eng & Comp Sci

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A multibeam array antenna employing a Butler matrix is a promising solution for fifth generation (5G) base stations. Due to inaccurate phase differences between output ports in the Butler matrix, the radiation characteristics could show incorrect main beam directions. In addition, the literature has also reported the issue of high amplitude imbalance in the Butler matrix. This paper presents a single-layer multibeam array antenna fed by an 8 × 8 Butler matrix operating at 28 GHz for 5G base station applications-a more cost-effective solution for large-scale production.The Butler matrix consists of twelve quadrature hybrids, sixteen crossovers, and eight phase shifters. This circuit was integrated with eight antenna elements at the output ports of the Butler matrix. The proposed multibeam array antenna was fabricated using a low dielectric constant and a low loss tangent substrate. The dimensions of the multibeam array antenna were 88 × 106 × 0.254 mm 3 . The Butler matrix achieved low insertion losses and low phase error with average values of 2.5 dB and less than ±10 • at 28 GHz, respectively. The measured return losses were less than −10 dB at 28 GHz. The measured radiation patterns were obtained and eight main beams were pointed at ±6 • , ±18 • , ±30 • , and ±44 • with measured gains between 9 dBi and 14 dBi.

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A Cost-Effective Wideband Switched Beam Antenna System for a Small Cell Base Station

Cited by 44 publications

References 23 publications

A 28-GHz Switched-Beam Antenna with Integrated Butler Matrix and Switch for 5G Applications

A 28-GHz Switched-Beam Antenna with Integrated Butler Matrix and Switch for 5G Applications

A review of hybrid couplers: State‐of‐the‐art, applications, design issues and challenges

Design and characterization of a compact single-layer multibeam array antennausing an 8×8 Butler matrix for 5G base station applications

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