Feasibility Study of Curvature Effect in Flexible Antenna Arrays for 2-Dimensional Beam Alignment of 6G Wireless Systems

TL;DR

This study explores how the curvature of flexible antenna arrays affects 6G wireless system performance, demonstrating potential for improved 2D beam alignment with minimal insertion loss through analytical and simulation methods.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed analysis of curvature effects on flexible antenna arrays for 6G systems, combining analytical, simulation, and practical deployment insights.

Findings

Curvature can be used for effective 2D beam alignment.

Flexible arrays show minimal insertion loss.

Performance metrics like SNR and BER are favorably impacted.

Abstract

This article investigates the influential role of flexible antenna array curvature on the performance of 6G communication systems with carrier frequencies above 100 GHz. It is demonstrated that the curvature of flexible antenna arrays can be leveraged for 2-dimensional beam alignment in phased arrays with relatively small insertion loss. The effect of antenna array bending on the radiation properties such as gain and antenna impedance are analytically studied and simulated for a 4x4 microstrip patch antenna array operating between 97.5-102.5 GHz. Moreover, the deployment of this flexible antenna array in conjunction with state-of-the-art flexible board packaging techniques is examined for 6G wireless transceivers based on 65nm CMOS technology and simulated for three variants of quadrature amplitude modulation (4QAM, 16 QAM, and 64 QAM). The communication performance in terms of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and bit error rate (BER) is evaluated using analytical derivations and simulation results which exhibit a relatively close match.