Millimeter-wave 5G Antennas for Smartphones: Overview and Experimental Demonstration

Abstract

For the first time to the authors best knowledge, this paper provides an overview of mmWave 5G antennas for cellular handsets. Practical design considerations and solutions related to the integration of mmWave phased-array antennas with beamswitching capabilities are investigated in detail. To experimentally examine the proposed methodologies, two types of mesh-grid phased-array antennas featuring reconfigurable horizontal and vertical polarizations are designed, fabricated and measured at the 60 GHz spectrum. Afterwards the antennas are integrated with the rest of the 60 GHz RF and digital architecture to create integrated mmWave antenna modules and implemented within fully-operating cellular handsets under plausible user scenarios. The effectiveness, current limitations and required future research areas regarding the presented mmWave 5G antenna design technologies are studied using mmWave 5G system benchmarks.