Wide Scan-Range PAF Telescope for Massive-MIMO 5G Base-Stations

With the emergence of the mobile fifth generation (5G), additional challenges are introduced for the radio access antennas at the base stations that operate at mm-waves. The base station antenna is then required to deliver high EIRP to compensate for the high path loss at mm-wave frequencies. Furthermore, the massive-MIMO concept is aimed to be applied to increase the overall system capacity. For these reasons, assuming traditional phased arrays, the number of antenna elements is expected to be large which will lead to high power consumption and the need for active cooling. In this presentation, the PAF reflector antenna concept will be proposed aiming at utilizing the reflector’s high gain to produce high EIRP. That can be achieved by utilizing a small number of active elements in the focal plane thanks to the reflector antenna’s focusing properties. Moreover, multibeam generation and steering is provided by exciting different antenna elements in the reflectors focal plane. This way, high EIRP can be generated while reducing the power consumption. At the symposium, a designed PAF reflector will be presented along with relevant simulation results of the past and ongoing research