Ever since the deployment of the first-generation of mobile telecommunications, wireless communication technology has evolved at a dramatically fast pace over the past four decades. The upcoming fifth-generation (5G) holds a great promise in providing an ultra-fast data rate, a very low latency, and a significantly improved spectral efficiency by exploiting the millimeter-wave spectrum for the first time in mobile communication infrastructures. In the years beyond 2030, newly emerged data-hungry applications and the greatly expanded wireless network will call for the sixth-generation (6G) communication that represents a significant upgrade from the 5G network – covering almost the entire surface of the earth and the near outer space. In both the 5G and future 6G networks, millimeter-wave technologies will play an important role in accomplishing the envisioned network performance and communication tasks. In this paper, the relevant millimeter-wave enabling technologies are reviewed: they include the recent developments on the system architectures of active beamforming arrays, beamforming integrated circuits, antennas for base stations and user terminals, system measurement and calibration, and channel characterization. The requirements of each part for future 6G communications are also briefly discussed.

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The Role of Millimeter-Wave Technologies in 5G/6G Wireless Communications

Recent advancement of communication system requires low cost, minimal weight, low profile and high-performance antenna to execute the demand of the future realization. A high gain novel microstrip patch antenna design is proposed, based on the photonic crystal for terahertz (THz) spectral band applications. This antenna is mounted on polyimide substrate that employs Photonic Band Gap (PBG) crystal and the Gain of 7.934 dB, Directivity 8.612 dBi and VSWR close to unity at resonant frequency of 0.6308 THz. The proposed antenna model is compared with homogeneous polyimide substrate structure based microstrip patch antenna and analyzed the radiation characteristics. Moreover, the performance of designed antenna is investigated with different PBG cylindrical distance, PBG hole radius, curvature radius of patch and substrate heights. The projected design antenna has a bandwidth of 36.25 GHz and −10 dB impedance with operating frequency range varying from 0.6152 THz to 0.6514 THz, hence it can be utilized for detection of explosive and material characterization applications.

Design and analysis of novel microstrip patch antenna on photonic crystal in THz

Ultrawideband elliptical microstrip antenna for terahertz applications

Hexagonal Fractal Antenna For Super Wideband Terahertz Applications

High-gain millimeter-wave antennas based on spoof surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) are proposed in this article. Since the dispersion of spoof SPP modes supported by metallic grooves is insensitive to their lateral width, we propose two millimeter-wave antennas with wide SPP grooves, namely an SPP tapering rod antenna and an SPP leaky-wave antenna. The widened grooves enlarge the aperture size of the antennas, enhancing the antenna gains. Both antennas are fed by a standard waveguide and are fabricated by 3-D printing with surface metallization. Based on the similar principle of conventional dielectric rod antennas, the proposed SPP rod antenna achieves broadband and high gain. The measured |S11| is below −16.5 dB from 50 to 75 GHz, and the antenna gain varies from 16.06 to 19.3 dBi. By employing periodic modulation, the SPP leaky-wave antenna operates from 50 to 70 GHz for |S11| below −10 dB. This leaky-wave antenna with 24 modulated periods achieves 20.1–23.9 dBi gain in the operating band with a beam-scanning range from −39° to −3°.

High-Gain Millimeter-Wave Antennas Based on Spoof Surface Plasmon Polaritons

This paper presents a novel frequency beam scanning slotted leaky-wave magnetoelectric (ME) dipole antenna array for the fifth generation (5G) application. The proposed antenna, which has eighteen elements of slots and electric dipoles, is built on a two-layer printed circuit board. In the lower layer, it is a conventional slotted substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) leaky-wave antenna (LWA). In the upper layer, electric dipoles are attached to the design. As for each element unit, the magnetic dipole is realized by each lower-layer aperture, while the electric dipole is realized by each pair of patches in the upper layer. The design concept is that two modes are excited together in orthogonal directions to realize the ME dipole. By introducing electric dipoles to the conventional slotted LWA, the antenna exhibits less gain variation over a wide bandwidth. The SIW leaky-wave ME dipole antenna array is designed and fabricated to operate at the 28-GHz band. It operates with wide impedance bandwidth and a peak gain of 16.55 dBi with less than 3-dB gain variation throughout the frequency range from 27 to 32 GHz.

Kwok-Kan So

Papers

A Magnetoelectric Dipole Leaky-Wave Antenna for Millimeter-Wave Application