Design and fabrication of two‐port three‐beam switched beam antenna array for 60 GHz communication

Abstract

This article presents a novel, low-cost, beam-switchable $2 \times 10$2x10 antenna array system operating at 60 GHz. This antenna system is constructed of two rows of Chebyshev-tapered microstrip antenna arrays. Each row is a 10 element series-fed array which are fed by a $90 \circ $90 circle coupler. The designed antenna array has only two input ports, but it is capable of generating three switchable beams. This antenna system can spatially scan $90 \circ $90 circle with at least -5 dB normalised gain using only one SPDT switch and a single transceiver. The maximum gain realised by the system was measured as 16.4 dBi and the bandwidth (BW) was >1 GHz. The features of the proposed antenna system make it applicable to do mmWave research such as beamforming algorithms and channel sounding, and to use in handsets for 5G communication.