Overview of research on metalenses and geodesic lenses for 5G/6G applications in Ericsson

6G energy‐efficient systems based on arrays combined with dielectric lenses

“…Furthermore, the resulting lens shape profile has the dimensions 207 × 207 × 88 mm 3 , fulfilling the size specifications of a typical millimeter‐wave antenna‐integrated radio unit for an outdoor street level scenario. It is worth noting that further improvement in gain values can be achieved by implementing a full optimization routine, since here only one iteration of the improvement steps described in [21] has been applied due to computational resources. In future work, more efficient numerical methods, such as ray‐tracing tools, can be used for a full optimization of the lens shape.…”

“…Here, differently, we aim to increase the gain in the entire field of view, that is, from 0° to 60°. Our initial lens design for 6G energy‐efficient communication systems is based on the lens models shown in [21]. Depending on the use case scenario (here we aim to achieve higher gain in the whole operating scanning range), the lens design is modified by performing a parameter sweep of each of the lens shape parameters using full‐wave simulations.…”

“…The lens design process is carried out by following the flowchart with steps for lens geometry improvement provided in [21] and using three dimensional (3‐D) simulations with CST Microwave Studio . Due to the heavy computational resources required when simulating the lens combined with array with a full‐wave simulation tool, only one iteration of the improvement steps flowchart of [21] has been carried out.…”

“…The lens design process is carried out by following the flowchart with steps for lens geometry improvement provided in [21] and using three dimensional (3‐D) simulations with CST Microwave Studio . Due to the heavy computational resources required when simulating the lens combined with array with a full‐wave simulation tool, only one iteration of the improvement steps flowchart of [21] has been carried out. Here, the shape of the dielectric lens is adjusted to maximize the gain of the array antenna at the 3GPP n257 band, within a scanning range of 0° to 60° in the $$xoz$$‐plane, which is also the E‐plane of the antenna.…”

“…In this work, the gain was increased more than 1 dB in the extreme angles, but at the cost of a loss in gain in the angles close to broadside due to their high constraints on the lens size. The same type of lenses were also investigated in [21] in order to demonstrate the re‐use of the same array antenna for different 6G use case scenarios by just customizing the dielectric lens shape placed on top of the array. In that work, the gain was increased in different angular ranges: close to broadside (0°‐30°) for outdoor street scenarios and extreme angles (60°–80°) for ceiling‐mounted indoor scenarios.…”