DESIGN OF A SWITCHED BEAM ANTENNA SYSTEM USING A 4 × 4 BUTLER MATRIX FOR WIRELESS COMMUNICATION APPLICATIONS

Abstract

Demand for quality service within the cellular network, which has many cells within the cluster, has certain requirements to satisfy the customer or subscriber at any cost. Hence, a reliable approach to provide quality service to the subscriber is needed, and in that attempt, a switched beam system is proposed, which is composed of a Butler matrix operating at 2 GHz for 5G wireless communication systems. The Butler matrix operates at 2 GHz, however, and has an overall bandwidth of 1.2 GHz, ranging from 1.8 GHz to 3 GHz. The beamforming operation is completed by incorporating an antenna array; typically for such applications a linear array with half lambda spacing is preferred. Here, the antenna array is made of a dielectric material, hence forming a dielectric resonator array operating at the same frequency as that of the Butler matrix. To complete the switched beam system, a radiofrequency source is chosen, typically USRP 2900 from National Instruments, to provide excitation to the Butler matrix throughout its operation. The simulation is carried out in Ansys HFSS and PCB Antenna Designer from MathWorks. This article gives the simulation as well as measured results of the Butler matrix and dielectric resonator antenna and draws a conclusion of the performance of the system based on simulated and measured results.