Millimeter‐wave planar antennas for 5G‐based remote monitoring and treatment of COVID‐19 patients

Abstract

AbstractSpreading of COVID‐19 intensely affected the social life, economics, and health care system globally. Remote treatment of COVID‐19 is required to prevent healthcare professionals from being infected and solve the shortage of health resources which is generated due to large number of COVID patients. Tele‐health services require low latency, high data rate connections between various sensors, and Internet of Things devices with reliable and uninterrupted networks, which can support massive number of devices. 5G‐based remote health care solutions are provided by various researchers to solve the aforementioned problems. Various technologies such as millimeter‐wave (mm‐wave), beamforming, and multiple‐input‐multiple‐output (MIMO) are used to fulfill the requirements. mm‐Wave spectrum provides wide available bandwidth, high speed, low latency, and compact antenna size but range of communication is limited due to high link losses and environmental attenuation. High‐gain, narrow beam‐steerable radiation properties of antenna are required to mitigate these losses. This article first presents the design of 16 elements mm‐Wave beam‐steerable planar array for 5G‐based COVID‐19 tracking and health care management. The proposed antenna provides 1.83 GHz of bandwidth with gain of 19.3 dB and side‐lobe levels of less than −24 dB at 28.67 GHz. Narrow main beam having 0.9° beamwidth can be steered from −50° to +45° with less than 5 dB reduction in gain. MIMO configurations of the proposed antenna are also discussed. MIMO performance parameters are under acceptable limit. The proposed antenna is potential cost efficient solution for 5G‐based COVID‐19 tracking and treatment applications.