Antennas and Propagation for 5G and Beyond
2: Frontier Institute for Research in Sensor Technologies, University of Maine, Orono, ME, USA
3: Antennas and Electromagnetics Research Group, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK
Transforming the way we live, work, and engage with our environment, 5G and beyond technologies will provide much higher bandwidth and connectivity to billions of devices. This brings enormous opportunities but of course the widespread deployment of these technologies faces challenges, including the need for reliable connectivity, a diverse range of bandwidths, dynamic spectrum sharing, channel modelling and wave propagation for ultra-dense wireless networks, as well as price pressures. The choice of an antenna system will also be a critical component of all node end devices and will present several design challenges such as size, purpose, shape and placement. In this edited book, the authors bring new approaches for exploiting challenging propagation channels and the development of efficient, cost-effective, scalable, and reliable antenna systems and solutions, as well as future perspectives. The book is aimed at a wide audience of industry and academic researchers, scientists and engineers as well as advanced students in the field of antennas, ICTs, signal processing and electromagnetics. It will also be useful to network and system designers, developers and manufacturers. Stakeholders, government regulators, policy makers and standards bodies can use the information provided here to better understand the effects of the technology on the market and future developments for 5G and beyond systems and networks.
Inspec keywords: reflectarray antennas; electromagnetic wave propagation; multifrequency antennas; millimetre wave antenna arrays; 5G mobile communication; MIMO communication; metamaterial antennas; spray coatings
Other keywords: 5G and beyond; spray-coated metalization; massive MIMO channels; wireless Xhaul; network provisioning associate impact; multiband millimetre-wave antennas; terahertz wireless communications; beamformer development challenges; on-chip antenna; OTA test methods; 5G propagation; metamaterial antennas; 3D-printed millimetre-wave antennas; performance modelling; reflectarray antennas
Subjects: General electrical engineering topics; Electromagnetic wave propagation; Mobile radio systems; Antenna arrays
- Book DOI: 10.1049/PBTE093E
- Chapter DOI: 10.1049/PBTE093E
- ISBN: 9781839530975
- e-ISBN: 9781839530982
- Page count: 410
- Format: PDF
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Front Matter
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1 Introduction to antennas and propagation for 5G and beyond
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It is anticipated that mm-wave frequencies will be used in 5G communication systems and beyond to facilitate the higher data throughput for the future wireless devices. The availability of unused bands at mm-waves will increase system capacity, deliver higher data rates and capable of accommodating exponential rise in the number of users, devices and services. Besides many advantages, the mm wave spectrum experiences severe path loss, high sensitivity to physical objects and edge diffraction issues, leading to smaller cell deployment and complex network architectures. Realising a network framework of highly dense cells with short-range radio links is an unprecedented challenge and involves several aspects such as efficient antenna designs and integrations, feasible and cost-effective fabrication techniques and reliable channel modelling techniques. It is recommended that the 5G antenna should offer a wideband operation to support high-speed communication, high gain and beamforming capabilities to overcome attenuations, and preferably fl exible, compact and cost-effective. Many novel antenna topologies embedded with advanced materials, phase shifters, massive arrays and techniques for efficient wireless propagation as key milestones to complete the transition from lower frequencies towards 5G networks and beyond are thoroughly discussed in this book.
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2 Antennas for 5G: state-of-the-art and open challenges
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5G technology provides users with a significantly better experience and is a key enabler of massive connectivity between people-to-people and people-to-machines as well as machines-to-machines. The low -latency transmission promised by 5G opens up the possibilities for implementing remote healthcare, self -driving cars, and virtual reality/augmented reality. 5G technology includes fully digital beamforming, multiple access technologies, and massive multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) to deliver higher data rates, higher bandwidth, and lower latency. Antenna along with other microwave systems plays an important role in achieving key features of 5G technology. Unlike a single base station antenna array technology, in 1990, the modern antenna system has evolved from a passive to an active antenna system with integrated radios and digital baseband processing units.
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3 Metamaterial antennas for 5G and beyond
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This chapter will outline the requirements for 5G communication systems and demonstrate how metamaterials are well placed to provide innovative solutions for the next generation and beyond. It will go onto describe aspects of metamaterial components and their tunability and showcase an example of an mm-wave antenna design based on metamaterial technology. The chapter will then go onto describe fabrication challenges of metamaterial systems, and how these can be mitigated.
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4 3D-printed millimetre-wave antennas with spray-coated metalization
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This chapter is concerned with corrugated plate antennas. The corrugated plate antennas, presented here, consist of a resonant slot formed within a metallic plate. The resonant slot is surrounded by a rectangular cavity and corrugations. Subwavelength slots surrounded by periodic corrugations have been widely investigated to deliver enhanced transmission at both optical and microwave bands. Inspired by the phenomenon observed at optical frequencies, highly directive single -band and dual -band -corrugated plate antennas were first realized and proposed by Beruete et al. This was achieved by scaling the optical structures to frequencies in the microwave frequency range. Generally speaking, the antennas consist of resonant slot -surrounded corrugations that are formed within a metallic slab. The slot is fed using a standard rectangular waveguide. The corrugations can be either straight or circular in shape.
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5 Multiband millimetre-wave antennas for 5G and beyond
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The multiband antennas offer a number of benefits to 5G and beyond systems. The antenna designers, however, face huge challenges due to growing demand of miniaturised devices as maintaining high-performance levels while offering small form factor is a complex task. This chapter has presented a detailed discussion on the need, requirements and operation of multiband antennas for 5G and beyond networks. The benefits of the multiband antennas are established as these antennas not only offer high performance and efficient operation at multiple frequencies but are also of small size. Performance of a slotted patch antenna consisting of L and F slots for the tri-band operation for wearable millimetre -wave devices operating at 28, 38 and 61 GHz is also studied. The antenna has been tested for off -body (free space), on -body and implanted configurations and appeared to be good in containing the degradations caused by the presence of the human body for 5G and beyond networks.
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6 On-chip antenna: challenges and design considerations
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This chapter focuses on on-chip antennas (OCAs). The challenges associated with OCA design, implementation, and characterization are discussed in detail. In addition, this chapter highlights the research work that has been conducted in this field to date. This chapter concludes by proposing future research directions in the field of OCA.
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7 Reflectarray antennas: potentials for 5G and beyond
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The array of elements combined together on a flat surface to reflect the incident signals coming from a properly distant feed defines the main architecture of a reflectarray antenna [1]. The reflection of the signals can be directed like a parabolic reflector with an additional advantage of a plane and light -weighted surface. Moreover, reflectarray can also perform beam scanning like a phased array antenna, but without the aid of any power divider or additional phase shifters [2]. The less complex designs of reflectarray make it more cost effective, especially for beam -scanning applications. The bulky and curvy design of parabolic antenna is not a good candidate for high -frequency applications [1]. Alternatively, a reflectarray antenna can easily be designed from as low as microwave [3] to as high as terahertz frequency range [4]. The adaptability of reflectarray to high frequencies makes it suitable for high -gain and high -bandwidth operation in a wide range of advanced applications, including 5G communications.
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8 Performance modelling of wireless Xhaul and associate impact on network provisioning for 5G and beyond
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5G is no longer a futuristic vision but has become today's reality whilst the research community has commenced the design of the next mobile wireless network generation, dubbed 6G. A successful 5G deployment will pave the way to a better 6G requirements definition but demands an imminent and efficient approach for tackling the related deployment challenges, not the least the backhaul (BH). The performance evolution of the current realistic BH infrastructure towards meeting the expectations of next -generation mobile networks is a lengthy and costly process.
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9 OTA test methods and candidates for 5G and beyond
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The digital economy is essential for wealth creation. Over the past few decades, the market for modern wireless communication systems has grown rapidly in response to consumer demand. As 'connectivity' becomes more and more ubiquitous and reliable and offers higher capacity, it will become the new 'lifeblood' of the digital economy and connected society with over 8.9 billion mobile subscriptions by 2022. Focusing on user experience, the fifth generation (5G) network is envisaged to offer a dramatic improvement over fourth generation (4G)'s network capabilities. 5G network promises more reliable, faster, and near -instant connections. With strong global momentum, multiple worldwide 5G research projects are defining, developing and standardizing the technology for 5G and beyond. To develop the necessary infrastructure to meet the aforementioned promises, significant efforts have been devoted in international liaison on seeking for a global consensus over visions, applications, standards and the identification of suitable spectrums. Following the approval of 3GPP (Third -Generation Partnership Project) Release 15 5G new radio (NR) standard in June 2018, 5G commercial networks were quickly launched in the United States (Verizon and AT&T) and South Korea (KT, LG UPlus and SK Telecom) by the end of the year. While the standardization process for 5G NR is ongoing, industry had already begun efforts to implement infrastructure compliant with the draft 5G NR standard.
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10 Beamformer development challenges for 5G and beyond
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In this chapter, we first discussed the definitions that are vital to understand the working of a beamformer. We then classified the beamformer based on the architecture, frequency of operation and a use case. These clarifications are done keeping in mind the future technological advancements in the communication industry. Beamformer architectures are further divided into purely analog, digital and hybrid types, when each one of them has a specific need in specialized communication standards. Frequency bands of operations are divided into the well-known 5G sub bands that are sub-6-GHz and mmWave bands. We further discussed the ways in which a beamformer function differs when they are operating at different frequency bands. Lastly, we classified beamformers in terms of their utility as a fixed or mobile radio in a communication system. State-of-the-art beamformer examples are comparatively analyzed to better predict the most suitable choice for a given classification of beamformers in the 5G and beyond applications.
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11 Massive MIMO channels
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Massive multiple -input multiple -output (MIMO) technology offers significant improvements in both spectral and energy efficiency by utilizing the same time and frequency resource as current radio networks to simultaneously serve multiple users with the use of channel state information measurements and linear processing schemes at the base station. These remarkable gains are obtained by equipping each base station with an array of many (hundreds or thousands) antennas to enable spatial multiplexing of many user terminals. The performance analysis of massive MIMO relies on its fundamental properties comprising the channel hardening, the favorable propagation, and the sparsity. This chapter presents some well-known channel models used in massive MIMO and evaluates their corresponding fundamental properties.
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12 Novel aspects in terahertz wireless communications
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The new `Tera-Era' visions extreme -high-speed wireless data transfer of 1 Tb/s and beyond, machines computing at rates of teraflops, and electronic devices performing operations on the femtosecond timescale. The key to break this 1-Tb/s barrier by wireless means incites numerous applications in wireless communications, material characterization, spectroscopy, imaging, sensing, and screening. In other words, 1 Tb/s implies that one may transfer 1 GB in 0.001 s. For instance, some of the most promising 5G applications such as augmented reality/mixed reality in the near future require a wireless data transmission capacity exceeding several hundred Gb/s. Meanwhile, with rapid prevalence of smartphones, more data -hungry applications are to emerge in 5G era. In addition, a forthcoming next generation video format, namely super hi -vision with a resolution 7,680 x 4,320, 16 times larger than the current 1080p format requires more than 24-Gb/s data rate depending on its frame rate and colour depth [1]. Likewise, cloud desktop and online gaming relying on Wi-Fi hotspot might accelerate this trend in data rates' traffic beyond the 1-Tb/s limit. Honestly speaking, the current wireless networks are not yet on the foreseeable horizon of 'wireless everything' or 'everything wireless'. Wireless stands here for point-to-point radio systems that propagate inside rooms as will be reasoned later. However, by exploiting the power and peril of terahertz (THz) band frequencies, i.e. in the frequency range of 250 GHz to 4 THz, numerous applications for high-speed data links such as 5G cellular network, terabit wireless local area networks, terabit wireless personal area networks, cloud servers, and ultrafast kiosk downloads are practically realizable.
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13 Conclusion and future perspectives
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This book presents a comprehensive overview of the communication transition towards the fifth generation (5G) networks and the role of advanced antenna solutions in this advancement. It is anticipated that 5G will build the foundation of many emerging technologies such as Internet of Things (IoT), device-to-device (D2D) communication and smart applications with cognitive control that can support industries to increase efficiency, open new productivity domains and effectively improve consumers' lifestyles. Faster connectivity, high data rates, low latency, security, energy efficiency and high mobility are the defining features of 5G to realise a real-wireless experience. The vision of 5G demands highly efficient antenna front ends and sophisticated algorithms to define the high-frequency wireless propagation. Many novel antenna design techniques such as metamaterial antennas, beamformers comprising reflectarray, phased-array antennas and massive multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) antennas, and state-of-the-art fabrication techniques such as three-dimensional (3D) printed antennas, antennas-on-chip and novel compact antenna designs for wideband operation have gained huge attention in 5G networks. The progress towards 5G has secured success in the complete redesigning of the mobile network framework, establishing the new protocols for data throughputs and network security, dealing with the fronthaul and backhaul issues and ensuring an efficient spectrum utilisation by enabling smart algorithms and channel-modelling techniques.
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Back Matter
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