Research on Structurally Integrated Phased Array for Wireless Communications

Abstract

Structurally integrated antenna is a kind of highly integrated microwave device with a loadbearing function, and it is usually installed on the structural surface of the air, water and ground vehicles. This paper presents the design, fabrication and testing of a novel structurally integrated Ka-band active antenna for airborne 5G wireless communications. The proposed antenna is mainly composed of three parts: a package layer, a control and signal process layer and a RF layer. In the RF layer, the microstrip antenna array, tile transmitting (Tx) modules, micro-channel heat sinks and a stripline feeding network are highly integrated into a functional block with a thickness of 2.8 mm. Electromechanical co-design methods are developed to design the active antenna array with the superstrates, and two schemes for designing micro-channel heat sinks are evaluated to obtain a uniform temperature distribution. The RF layer is fabricated by using the low-temperature cofired ceramic process, and the three layers are assembled to form the full-size antenna prototype. The mechanical and electromagnetic experiments are carried out, and the results demonstrate the feasibility of the structurally integrated active antenna for airborne wireless communications. INDEX TERMS 5G communications, phased array antenna, structurally integrated active antenna, lowtemperature cofired ceramic (LTCC), micro-channel heat sinks. I. INTRODUCTION Significant momentum has started to build around the 5G wireless communication technologies for delivering mobile experience differentiation by providing higher data rates, lower latency, and improved link robustness [1], [2]. In this regard, millimeter-wave phased array antenna is a very promising solution for 5G wireless communications, due to the wide bandwidths and steerable beams. The millimeterwave phased array antenna can be applied to realize the wireless connection between the base stations and wireless terminals in a mobile vehicle such as the aircraft, high-speed train, car, and ship. Moreover, it can be continuously steered to the base stations, which could guarantee reliable connections in these mobile environments [3]-[5]. In addition, the multi-gigabits-per-second data speeds in 5G will provide new wireless communication applications such as uncompressed video streaming, mobile distributed computing, fast large file The associate editor coordinating the review of this manuscript and approving it for publication was Yasar Amin .

Compact High‐Gain Volumetric Phased Array Antenna with Genetically Designed Interelement Resonances for 5G Applications

“…In this case, the spatial arrangement of radiators and their relative phase shifts play a key role, especially if the number of elements is large. Owing to a high level of design flexibility and scalability, phased arrays can be made conformal to a structure, [2] implemented on flexible substrates, [3,4] embedded into enclosures, [5] integrated within peripheral electronic circuitry, [6] and have many other engineering advances. In classical phased arrays, the interspacing between elements is kept wavelength comparable, as overpopulating the area with radiators does not provide a significant advantage and comes with elevating design complexity and implementation costs.…”

Evaluation of a Planar Reconfigurable Phased Array Antenna Driven by a Multi-Channel Beamforming Module at Ka Band

“…Nevertheless, a lot of MCMB-driven planar phased array antennas reported in literature [30]- [31], [33]- [38] do not analyze neither the behavior of the IC and its non-idealities nor its direct impact on the radiation properties of the array when both are integrated. However, it is true that many other papers employ numerous mathematical analysis techniques to infer the effects of devices such as amplifiers or phase shifters on the radiation pattern.…”

Si-based system-in-package design with broadband interconnection for E-band applications

“…To achieve both high-performance and low-profile, the 3-dimensional (3-D) system-in-package (SiP) has been an attractive and efficient approach to produce MMW wireless systems [7,8,9,10]. At present, low temperature co-fired ceramic (LTCC) [11,12,13,14,15], highdensity interconnect (HDI) [16,17,18,19,20], and embedded wafer level ball grid array (eWLB) [21,22,23,24,25] have all been demonstrated for mass production of MMW SiPs. However, the selection for MMW SiP is a tradeoff among compactness, cost, electrical performance and thermo-mechanical reliability [26].…”