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Electronics
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Advanced Antenna Technologies for B5G and 6G Applications
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Advanced Antenna Technologies for B5G and 6G Applications

A special issue of Electronics (ISSN 2079-9292). This special issue belongs to the section "Microwave and Wireless Communications".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 July 2024 | Viewed by 5126

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Ulf Johannsen

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Electrical Engineering Department, Eindhoven University of Technology, 5612 AZ Eindhoven, The Netherlands
Interests: antenna systems for various applications; Millimeter-Wave; Antenna Arrays; MIMO; autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) systems

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Following the official roll-out of 5G at the beginning of the decade, the research related to beyond-5G (B5G) and 6G technology is currently picking up speed. The millimetre-wave (mm-wave) part of the spectrum is especially in focus. Owing to the large bandwidth and narrow beamwidth at these frequencies, it has been proposed to also add a sensing functionality to the communication system. This would allow for high-resolution imaging within the communication network and introduce a great variety of new use cases. However, while 5G mm-wave systems employ analogue beamforming systems with a single beam per antenna array, B5G and 6G systems must address at least multi-beam solutions, if not directly fully digital arrays, in order to make full use of the potential offered by these frequency bands. At the same time, power consumption is an ever-growing concern for both ecological and economic reasons, as a power-hungry front-end can significantly add to the cost of ownership. High integration of the antennas together with the front-end and back-end electronics into the same package is one way to address this issue. Additionally, signal processing using photonic integrated circuit (PIC) technology has been proposed in order to achieve wide-band and high-performance solutions with low power consumption.

This Special Issue addresses the current state-of-the-art of B5G and 6G antenna research from both academia and industry. Researchers are invited to submit their original contributions on topics including but not limited to the following:

  • Multi-beam millimetre-wave antennas;
  • Fully digital millimetre-wave antennas;
  • Antennas for joint communication and sensing (JCAS);
  • Antennas for non-terrestrial B5G and 6G;
  • Antennas for power-efficient mm-wave communications;
  • Antenna–electronics co-design;
  • Antennas with co-integrated photonics;
  • Antenna integration technology/antenna-in-package.

Review papers that cover the subjects of this Special Issue are also welcome. Submissions should be of high quality, suitable for an international journal, and should not have been submitted or published elsewhere.

Dr. Ulf Johannsen
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Electronics is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • joint communication and sensing (JCAS)
  • millimetre-wave antennas
  • antenna arrays
  • antenna integration
  • antenna-in-package
  • radio-over-fibre
  • 6G

Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

11 pages, 9773 KiB  
Article
Wide-Angle Beam-Switching Antenna with Stable Gain Based on a Virtual Image Lens
by Oskar Zetterstrom, Nelson J. G. Fonseca and Oscar Quevedo-Teruel
Electronics 2024, 13(6), 1034; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics13061034 - 10 Mar 2024
Viewed by 743
Abstract
Beam-switching antennas based on quasi-optical beamformers can provide cost-effective solutions for high-frequency communication applications. Here, we propose a wide-angle beam-switching planar lens antenna based on the recently presented virtual image lens. The antenna operates from 24 to 28 GHz and produces a beam [...] Read more.
Beam-switching antennas based on quasi-optical beamformers can provide cost-effective solutions for high-frequency communication applications. Here, we propose a wide-angle beam-switching planar lens antenna based on the recently presented virtual image lens. The antenna operates from 24 to 28 GHz and produces a beam that can be steered in a 100-degrees range in one plane with less than 2 dB simulated gain variation over the angular range and operational band. The performance of the presented antenna is similar to reported lens antennas with stable gain, but the proposed lens requires a smaller refractive index range to be realized, which alleviates the manufacturing. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advanced Antenna Technologies for B5G and 6G Applications)
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16 pages, 9543 KiB  
Article
3D Phased Array Enabling Extended Field of View in Mobile Satcom Applications
by Federico Boulos, Georg Frederik Riemschneider and Stefano Caizzone
Electronics 2024, 13(2), 310; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics13020310 - 10 Jan 2024
Viewed by 607
Abstract
Satellite communication (satcom) is experiencing increased interest to cover the connectivity gaps of terrestrial networks. To ensure high performance and throughput for the user—and even more so in Communications-On-The-Move(COTM) systems, e.g., in aeronautics—steerable antennas such as phased arrays are required to adjust the [...] Read more.
Satellite communication (satcom) is experiencing increased interest to cover the connectivity gaps of terrestrial networks. To ensure high performance and throughput for the user—and even more so in Communications-On-The-Move(COTM) systems, e.g., in aeronautics—steerable antennas such as phased arrays are required to adjust the beam so as to follow the satellite’s trajectory. The mutual movement of terminals and satellite in COTM systems calls for a broad Field of View (FoV) and, hence, poses a challenge to common planar systems. For improving the FoV, common solutions require ad hoc designs, such as multi-mode antennas, wide half-power-beamwidth antennas or metasurfaces. By contrast, 3D arrays are able to cover a wider angular region by the 3D allocation of the antennas. In this paper, the benefits and drawbacks of moving from 2D (planar) arrays to 3D phased arrays are investigated. Multiple geometrical configurations are analyzed, keeping in mind the size requirements of aeronautic terminals. The best configuration is, hence, an array capable of enhancing the FoV of the terminal. The proposed antenna architecture offers a good trade-off between design complexity and performance, and it could be further developed to become an aeronautic-grade terminal aperture. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advanced Antenna Technologies for B5G and 6G Applications)
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16 pages, 13408 KiB  
Article
A 220 GHz to 325 GHz Grounded Coplanar Waveguide Based Periodic Leaky-Wave Beam-Steering Antenna in Indium Phosphide Process
by Akanksha Bhutani, Marius Kretschmann, Joel Dittmer, Peng Lu, Andreas Stöhr and Thomas Zwick
Electronics 2023, 12(16), 3482; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics12163482 - 17 Aug 2023
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1640
Abstract
This paper presents a novel periodic grounded coplanar waveguide (GCPW) leaky-wave antenna implemented in an Indium Phosphide (InP) process. The antenna is designed to operate in the 220 GHz–325 GHz frequency range, with the goal of integrating it with an InP uni-traveling-carrier photodiode [...] Read more.
This paper presents a novel periodic grounded coplanar waveguide (GCPW) leaky-wave antenna implemented in an Indium Phosphide (InP) process. The antenna is designed to operate in the 220 GHz–325 GHz frequency range, with the goal of integrating it with an InP uni-traveling-carrier photodiode to realize a wireless transmitter module. Future wireless communication systems must deliver a high data rate to multiple users in different locations. Therefore, wireless transmitters need to have a broadband nature, high gain, and beam-steering capability. Leaky-wave antennas offer a simple and cost-effective way to achieve beam-steering by sweeping frequency in the THz range. In this paper, the first periodic GCPW leaky-wave antenna in the 220 GHz–325 GHz frequency range is demonstrated. The antenna design is based on a novel GCPW leaky-wave unit cell (UC) that incorporates mirrored L-slots in the lateral ground planes. These mirrored L-slots effectively mitigate the open stopband phenomenon of a periodic leaky-wave antenna. The leakage rate, phase constant, and Bloch impedance of the novel GCPW leaky-wave UC are analyzed using Floquet’s theory. After optimizing the UC, a periodic GCPW leaky-wave antenna is constructed by cascading 16 UCs. Electromagnetic simulation results of the leaky-wave antenna are compared with an ideal model derived from a single UC. The two design approaches show excellent agreement in terms of their reflection coefficient and beam-steering range. Therefore, the ideal model presented in this paper demonstrates, for the first time, a rapid method for developing periodic leaky-wave antennas. To validate the simulation results, probe-based antenna measurements are conducted, showing close agreement in terms of the reflection coefficient, peak antenna gain, beam-steering angle, and far-field radiation patterns. The periodic GCPW leaky-wave antenna presented in this paper exhibits a high gain of up to 13.5 dBi and a wide beam-steering range from −60° to 35° over the 220 GHz–325 GHz frequency range. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advanced Antenna Technologies for B5G and 6G Applications)
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24 pages, 2588 KiB  
Article
Sparse Tiled Planar Array: The Shared Multibeam Aperture for Millimeter-Wave Joint Communication and Sensing
by Hadi Alidoustaghdam, André Kokkeler and Yang Miao
Electronics 2023, 12(14), 3115; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics12143115 - 18 Jul 2023
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1058
Abstract
Multibeam planar arrays are investigated as shared apertures for dual functionality in millimeter-wave (mmWave) joint communication and sensing (JCAS), providing time division duplex communication and full-duplex sensing with steerable beams. The conventional uniform planar arrays (CUPA)s have limited angular resolution, whereas the sparse [...] Read more.
Multibeam planar arrays are investigated as shared apertures for dual functionality in millimeter-wave (mmWave) joint communication and sensing (JCAS), providing time division duplex communication and full-duplex sensing with steerable beams. The conventional uniform planar arrays (CUPA)s have limited angular resolution, whereas the sparse planar arrays (SPA)s are often very costly to implement. In order to have a low-cost aperture with high angular resolution, we propose to design a sparse tiled planar array (STPA) shared aperture. Our proposed solution is modular tiling and uniform at the subarray level but sparse at the aperture level. The modular tiling and sparse design of a planar array are non-convex optimization problems; however, we exploit the fact that the more irregularity of the antenna array geometry, the less the side lobe level (SLL). In a JCAS scenario, we compare the performance of STPA, CUPA. and SPA, regarding the spectral efficiency of a line-of-sight (LoS) included communication link, detection loss rate, and detection accuracy rate for sensing, and the blockage time in case of an overlapping communication and sensing beam. The SPA for comparison has the same size and beamwidth as STPA, but less average SLL and less modular design. The results show that the same spectral efficiency is achieved in the communication link for CUPA, SPA, and STPA. The effect of a smaller beamwidth of the STPA and SPA is reflected in the lower detection loss rate of them compared to that of the CUPA, but the side lobes of these sparse solutions result in errors in the association of the detected and true targets and hence a reduction in the detection accuracy. In such a multibeam solution for JCAS, it is critical to study blockage time, and we show that the STPA and SPA have a 40% shorter blockage time compared to the CUPA when a blocker moves across the LoS of the communication link. Therefore, STPA is a trade-off solution between CUPA and SPA, since it has uniformly distributed antennas within the subarrays as in CUPA, but a sparse solution in the whole aperture as in SPA, which guarantees the same beamwidth and sensing performances as a SPA. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advanced Antenna Technologies for B5G and 6G Applications)
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