Abstract
AbstractThis paper presents a 60 GHz connected slots linear-phased array feeding a high-gain semi-symmetric lens antenna. This design provides high gain, broadband, and beam-steering capabilities for gigabit rate access and backhaul communications. The connected slots antenna array (CSAA) is excited at 16× equidistant points which not only yields spatial power combining but also allows the progressive phase changes to steer the beam in ±45° in azimuth plane. To characterize the CSAA-fed lens antenna, four different power splitters are fabricated which steer the main beam in 0, 15, 30, and 45°. The lens is designed in a way to overcome the scan loss and get comparatively higher gain when beam is steered away from the broadside. The measured results show 25.4 dBi maximum gain with 3 dB gain bandwidth covering the full band 57–66 GHz whereas 3 dB beam-steering range is ±45° for all frequencies. Besides, the half power beamwidth is 6 and 10° in elevation (E-plane) and azimuth plane (H-plane), respectively.
Highlights
The exponentially increasing wireless data demands have called for millimeter-wave frequency bands where the 60 GHz unlicensed band has especially attracted the researchers’ and industry’s attention to realize several Gbps throughput
The connected slots antenna array (CSAA) is excited at 16× equidistant points which yields spatial power combining and allows the progressive phase changes to steer the beam in ±45° in azimuth plane
The feed-switchable antenna arrays feeding the lens have been largely reported in the literature [1,2,3,4,5], the beam can only be steered to the predefined angles with this technique, and the link can break if the orientation of the antenna changes from its predefined position
Summary
The exponentially increasing wireless data demands have called for millimeter-wave frequency bands where the 60 GHz unlicensed band has especially attracted the researchers’ and industry’s attention to realize several Gbps throughput. No comparison of measurements and simulations is shown for other beam-steering angles as master/slave or symmetry boundary conditions are used in the simulations which either do not take into consideration the hemi-spherical terminations on the YY′ axis or doesn’t allow beam-steering (as symmetry boundary condition doesn’t provide option for progressive phase shift on other side of the boundary) These hemi-spherical terminations play a role in improving the gain of the array when beam is steered away from the broadside. The results presented in this paper are limited to 0, 15, 30, and 45° as only four different power splitters are fabricated to characterize the performance of the array This array shall be integrated with the 16-path 57–71 GHz beam-forming Si–Ge transceiver chip [11] which can excite each feed point of CSAA with appropriate phase and amplitude to steer the beam at any arbitrary angle in ± 45° and beyond
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