Abstract
This paper presents the design and implementation of a miniaturized beam steering network that produces broadside beams when it is fed with a compact antenna array. Butler Matrix (BM) was used as the beam steering network. It was completely built from a miniaturized 3 dB hybrid-couplers in planar microstrip technology. It was configured by feeding the BM with a Planar Inverted-E Antenna (PIEA) array separated at 0.3 λ as against the 0.5 λ separation. This makes the BM produce a major radiation pattern at the broadside. Apart from the miniaturization, no modification was made from the BM side. However, employing effective mutual coupling reduction techniques helped to design the compact PIEA array. The validity of this BM based multibeam PIEA array was demonstrated by comparing the simulation results of the reflection coefficients, transmissions coefficients and the radiation pattern with measurements. The measurement results showed good agreement with simulations.
Highlights
Beamforming arrays and multibeam antennas are key technology being employed in 5G to achieve high data rates
This is mostly due to the presence of fixed phase shifters, crossovers, and hybrid couplers employed in the design, with all their dimensions constrained by λ/4 wavelength transmission lines (TL), which usually posed some
No modification was made from the Butler Matrix (BM) side
Summary
Beamforming arrays and multibeam antennas are key technology being employed in 5G to achieve high data rates. In [13], a lumped element was used to replace the λ/4 wavelength TL of the phase shifters and the 3dB hybrid couplers of the BM with the aim of reducing the size of BM This technique drastically makes the BM compact in size. From this figure, the input ports are designated as P1−P4 where the BM is excited, A1−A4 are the outputs ports where antenna arrays are connected. A miniaturized BM was implemented as the beam steering network that produces the broadside beam This is contrary to the assertion made in [19] that it is not possible to use Butler matrices with 900 hybrids couplers to. The broadside beam is obtained by designing a compact PIEA array with 0.3 λ spacing, which utilises effective mutual coupling reduction techniques
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