TY - JOUR
T1 - Design and analysis of Maxwell fisheye lens based beamformer
AU - Abbasi, Muhammad Ali Babar
AU - Ansari, Rafay I.
AU - Machado, Gabriel Goncalves
AU - Fusco, Vincent
PY - 2021/11/23
Y1 - 2021/11/23
N2 - Antenna arrays and multi-antenna systems are essential in beyond 5G wireless networks for providing wireless connectivity, especially in the context of Internet-of-Everything. To facilitate this requirement, beamforming technology is emerging as a key enabling solution for adaptive on-demand wireless coverage. Despite digital beamforming being the primary choice for adaptive wireless coverage, a set of applications rely on pure analogue beamforming approaches, e.g., in point-to-multi point and physical-layer secure communication links. In this work, we present a novel scalable analogue beamforming hardware architecture that is capable of adaptive 2.5-dimensional beam steering and beam shaping to fulfil the coverage requirements. Beamformer hardware comprises of a finite size Maxwell fisheye lens used as a scalable feed network solution for a semi-circular array of monopole antennas. This unique hardware architecture enables a flexibility of using 2 to 8 antenna elements. Beamformer development stages are presented while experimental beam steering and beam shaping results show good agreement with the estimated performance.
AB - Antenna arrays and multi-antenna systems are essential in beyond 5G wireless networks for providing wireless connectivity, especially in the context of Internet-of-Everything. To facilitate this requirement, beamforming technology is emerging as a key enabling solution for adaptive on-demand wireless coverage. Despite digital beamforming being the primary choice for adaptive wireless coverage, a set of applications rely on pure analogue beamforming approaches, e.g., in point-to-multi point and physical-layer secure communication links. In this work, we present a novel scalable analogue beamforming hardware architecture that is capable of adaptive 2.5-dimensional beam steering and beam shaping to fulfil the coverage requirements. Beamformer hardware comprises of a finite size Maxwell fisheye lens used as a scalable feed network solution for a semi-circular array of monopole antennas. This unique hardware architecture enables a flexibility of using 2 to 8 antenna elements. Beamformer development stages are presented while experimental beam steering and beam shaping results show good agreement with the estimated performance.
UR - https://pure.qub.ac.uk/en/publications/ab45b2ff-1733-439f-b570-1d48d46ed6c7
U2 - 10.1038/s41598-021-02058-9
DO - 10.1038/s41598-021-02058-9
M3 - Article
C2 - 34815440
SN - 2045-2322
SP - 1
EP - 8
JO - Scientific Reports
JF - Scientific Reports
ER -