An Inclusive Survey on Array Antenna Design for Millimeter-Wave Communications

• Published in: IEEE access Vol. 7; pp. 83137 - 83161
• Main Authors: Ghosh, Saswati, Sen, Debarati
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Piscataway IEEE 2019; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: antenna array design; Antenna arrays; Antenna design; Antenna feeds; Antennas; array configuration; Arrays; Beamforming; Circuits; Communication; Communications systems; feed mechanism; Frequency ranges; Linear antenna arrays; Millimeter waves; Mm-wave communication; Phased arrays; Radio frequency; RF circuit; Wireless communication; Wireless communications
• ISSN: 2169-3536; 2169-3536
• DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2019.2924805

The enormous growth of wireless data traffic in recent years has made the millimeter-wave (mm-wave) technology as a good fit for high-speed communication systems. Extensive works are continuing from the device to system, to the radio architecture, to the network to support the communication in mm-wave frequency ranges. To support this extensive high data rate, beam forming is found to be the key-enabling technology. Hence, an array antenna design is an extremely important issue. The beam-forming arrays are chosen to achieve the desired link capacity considering the high path loss and atmospheric loss at mm-wave frequencies and also to increase the coverage of the mm-wave communication system. There are diverse design challenges of the array due to the small size, use of large numbers of antennas in close vicinity, integration with radio-frequency (RF) front ends, hardware constraints, and so on. This paper focuses on the evolution and development of mm-wave array antenna and its implementation for wireless communication and numerous other related areas. The scope of the discussion is extended on the reported works in every sphere of mm-wave antenna array design, including the selection of antenna elements, array configurations, feed mechanism, integration with front-end circuitry to understand the effects on system performance, and the underlying reason of it. The new design aspects and research directions are unfolded as a result of this discussion.