An Analytical Investigation on the Performance of 1D and 2D Antenna Arrays for mm-Wave Modern Communication Systems

Abstract

Millimeter wave (mm-Wave) wireless technology has invaded every aspect of modern life because of its ability to transmit data quickly and securely. This paper presented a square patch antenna at a resonance frequency of 26.2GHz for millimeter wave wireless communication. The proposed antenna consists of single square radiating element. The suggested antenna was designed using CST Microwave Studio’s version 2020 on a Rogers RO 3003 lossy substrate with a relative permittivity of 3 . The result of this paper shows a minimum S11 of 19.34 dB, a gain of 6.97dBi, with bandwidth of 2GHz at the resonant frequency of 26.2GHz. The gain was enhanced to 16dBi and 25.8dBi with a high radiation efficiency by converting the single element patch antenna to a uniform linear array of 8 elements and uniform planar array of 8 × 8 elements respectively. The simulation results show that despite the simple design of the patch (without holes and cracks), which facilitates manufacturing in a small size; However, it achieves higher gain than the more complex designs found in the previous literature to suit mm wave communication requirements. Also, we used CST Microwave Studio for simulation which provides two methods for implementing arrays: the array factor method, which builds virtual arrays (the direct method), or building arrays by repeating the elements depending on the required size of the array, A comparison has been conducted between the numerical analysis of both methods, and the results show that even though the numerical analysis of the second method gives more accurate results that can be close to a manufactured antenna array, it needs high processing ability and time. Creating arrays with array factor may save time and processing ability but the results may not be accurate. Therefore, a relation was driven to show the error that can be added to give precise results.