A Tri-Band Shared-Aperture Base Station Antenna Array Covering 5G Mid-Band and 6G Centimetric Wave Band

TL;DR

This paper introduces a tri-band shared-aperture antenna array designed for 5G and 6G bands, addressing interference suppression and maintaining high performance across wide frequency ranges for future base station applications.

Contribution

It presents a novel segmented spiral radiator with reduced RCS and a planar ME dipole structure for multi-band operation, improving interference mitigation and radiation consistency.

Findings

Achieved ultra-wide RCS reduction of 128.2% over 4.7-21.5 GHz.

Successfully covered 5G mid-band and 6G centimetric band with high isolation.

Maintained undistorted radiation patterns across all three bands.

Abstract

This work proposes a tri-band shared-aperture antenna array with three wide bands, covering the 5G mid-band and the 6G centimetric band, which is a promising candidate for future 6G base station antennas. The challenge of suppressing interferences, including scattering and coupling, in the tri-band array is holistically addressed across wide bands. Guided by characteristic mode analysis (CMA), a segmented spiral radiator is efficiently developed to mitigate scattering and coupling at high frequencies while preserving radiation performance at low frequencies. Compared to a conventional tube radiator, the proposed spiral exhibits a reduced radar cross-section (RCS) over an ultra-wide range of 4.7-21.5 GHz (128.2%). With the aid of serial resonators, impedance matching of the segmented-spiral-based dipole antenna is achieved across the low band (LB) of 3.05-4.68 GHz (42.2%), spanning the 5G band 3.3-4.2 GHz. Moreover, suppressors are placed near the LB ports to further reduce the cross-band coupling. Middle band (MB) and high band (HB) antennas operate in 6.2-10.0 GHz (46.9%) and 10.0-15.6 GHz (43.8%), respectively, collectively covering the anticipated 5G-Advanced and 6G centimetric band of 6.425-15.35 GHz. Both the MB and HB antennas employ a planar magnetoelectric (ME) dipole structure, which prevents common-mode resonances in the LB and MB, and mitigates the scattering from the MB antenna in the HB. In this tri-band array, radiation patterns remain undistorted across the LB, MB, and HB, and the isolation between any two ports exceeds 20 dB over all three bands.