Millimeter-wave Multimode Circular Array for Spatially Encoded Beamforming in a Wide Coverage Area

TL;DR

This paper presents a millimeter-wave circular antenna array capable of wide-area beamforming with spatial encoding, supporting azimuth and elevation modes, suitable for 5G coverage.

Contribution

It introduces a novel 12-element multilayer patch antenna array enabling 360-degree azimuth and orbital angular momentum mode transmission for wide coverage.

Findings

Achieves near-hemispherical coverage with spatially encoded beamforming.

Supports multiple transmission modes including broadcast, unicast, multicast, and OAM.

Demonstrates effective radiation performance suitable for mmWave 5G applications.

Abstract

This paper summarizes an investigation around millimeter-wave (mmWave) multimode circular antenna array based beamformer capable of specially encoded data transmission in a wide coverage area. The circular antenna array is capable of an entire 360 deg. azimuth sector coverage where broadcast, uni-cast and multi-cast radio transmissions are possible. Orbital angular momentum (OAM) mode transmission along the elevation axis, i.e., perpendicular to the azimuth plane, can also be achieved. These two types of spatially encoded beamforming makes coverage in almost an entire hemisphere possible. The circular array is developed using twelve multilayer patch antennas with unique radiation performance aiding in both azimuth and elevation radiation. The proposed array architecture and its radiation performance makes it a good candidate for spatially encoded beamforming for mmWave 5G.