5G Millimeter-Wave Beamforming System using Substrate Integrated Waveguide

Abstract

Beamforming is a key element of 5G that uses advanced antenna technologies to focus a wireless signal to a defined direction. Butler Matrix (BM) as a beamforming network is used to control the beam direction by utilizing the amplitude and the output phase. A particular technique for designing BM is through substrate integrated waveguide (SIW), which is used to realize the bilateral edge wall vias where the waveguide mode propagates through to support the current flow and reduce the loss of surface wave. Unlike conventional BM, the proposed design requires only hybrid couplers and phase shifter without any crossover. In this BM structure, the SIW hybrid coupler is designed, with two phase shifters of -90°, and one phase shifter of -180° to control the amplitude and phase shifting. This results in an optimized transmission amplitude and output phase difference. The BM also circumvents any crossover, to provide minimal losses. The hybrid coupler exhibits Sii and Sij characteristics at 28 GHz, with values of -27.35 dB for return loss, -3.9 dB for insertion loss, -3.2 dB for coupling, and -26.54 dB for the isolation. In the BM design, high transmission efficiency is observed where the return loss is less than -10 dB, while minimal transmission amplitudes are obtained within the values of ‒6 ± 3 dB. The three-port BM is designed using SIW with minimal loss and the phase difference at each respective output port of the BM shows values of 0°, -120°, and 120°. The three consecutive beams with the gains of 11.1 dBi for port 1 excitation, 9.06 dBi for port 2 excitation and 10.4 dBi for port 3 excitation is achieved when the antenna array is fed to the BM, and each of the radiated beams has beam angles of 0, -27 and 27 degrees.