Antenna Preprocessing and Element-Pattern Shaping for Multi-Band mmWave Arrays: Multi-Port Receivers and Antennas

• Published in: IEEE journal of solid-state circuits Vol. 55; no. 6; pp. 1455 - 1470
• Main Authors: Lu, Xuyang, Chappidi, Chandrakanth Reddy, Wu, Xue, Sengupta, Kaushik
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01.06.2020; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Antenna arrays; Antennas; Aperture antennas; Apertures; Architecture; Arrays; Bandwidths; Broadband antennas; Circuits; Co-design; Directive antennas; Frequency ranges; Gratings; Millimeter waves; MIMO; MIMO (control systems); mmWave; Notches; phased array; Receivers & amplifiers; Receiving antennas; reconfigurable antenna; Reconfiguration; Signal processing; spatial multiplexing; Transceivers
• ISSN: 0018-9200; 1558-173X
• DOI: 10.1109/JSSC.2020.2967544

The ability to pre-process incident RF signals on a single-antenna aperture in a multi-port antenna/receiver architecture with reconfigurable element patterns can allow unique functionalities, that are distinct from traditional transceivers with single-port antennas. The multiple ports allow reconfigurable passive spatial signal processing before the transceiver through element-pattern synthesis including element maxima and notch control. In this article, we show that when combined in an MIMO array, tailoring of element patterns through such multi-port receiver-antenna architectures can allow periodic arrays to operate over a wide frequency range, even at element spacings approaching one wavelength long. Such a frequency-reconfigurable operation of scalable arrays is important for future multi-band 5G systems and beyond. When operated at high frequencies in the spatially undersampled regime, array grating lobes can be suppressed by orienting the element-pattern notches toward the grating maxima in a reconfigurable fashion. In addition, the multi-port electromagnetic (EM)-circuit interface can allow spatial signal processing before the transceivers including the passive suppression of a spatial interferer at the antenna interface. Through a codesign methodology between the EM interface and the multi-port receiver architecture, we present an architecture with a bandwidth across 37-73 GHz for broadside incidence, reconfigurable element patterns that allow antenna-level signal processing, spatial, frequency, and partial polarization diversity.