Open AccessMassive MIMO antenna system for 5G base stations with directive ports and switched beamsteering capabilities
Author(s) -
AlTarifi Monjed A.,
Sharawi Mohammad S.,
Shamim Atif
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
iet microwaves, antennas and propagation
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.555
H-Index - 69
eISSN - 1751-8733
pISSN - 1751-8725
DOI - 10.1049/iet-map.2018.0005
Subject(s) - mimo , port (circuit theory) , antenna (radio) , bandwidth (computing) , tilt (camera) , base station , engineering , physics , electronic engineering , acoustics , electrical engineering , telecommunications , mechanical engineering , beamforming
A 72‐port (288 antennas) triangular‐shaped massive multiple‐input–multiple‐output (mMIMO) antenna system is presented for fifth generation (5G) base stations. Each side of the antenna system consists of three layers with a total size of 44.4 × 29.6 × 0.1524 cm 3 , and contains 24 ports. Each port (subarray) consists of 2 × 2 patches on the top layer, their feeding network with pre‐calculated phases is on the bottom layer and the ground plane is in the middle one. Each port is fed in a way to tilt its beam direction with respect to others to achieve uncorrelated individual patterns. The antenna system is the first to support two operating modes: simultaneous individual port operation (i.e. 72‐port MIMO) and mMIMO array operation (i.e. with beam switching). The measured bandwidth is 100 MHz that covers the band from 3.45 to 3.55 GHz. The measured gain of a single port equals to 9.41 dBi. The envelop correlation coefficient does not exceed 0.1198. A beamsteering method to steer the beam of each 24‐port side to different locations in the space is presented and applied based on the non‐uniform port patterns (unlike most conventional methods). Thirteen switched beams are obtained with centre angle coverage up to 34° in elevation with maximum gain of 19.5 dBi.