Circular Dipole Array With Omnidirectional and Beam-steering Capabilities for 5G Communications

The design of a dipole antenna array with beam-steering capabilities as well as omnidirectional performance in the US 5G Sub 6-GHz band is reported. The single radiating element consists on a planar dipole formed by printing two arms back to back on a circular substrate. The proposed circular antenna array is composed of four dipoles with four open circuit used as switches. The pattern reconfigurability is achieved by controlling the switching states. The design processes are presented, and the structure is optimized and simulated. According to the simulated results, seven modes with a global matching bandwidth of 180MHz ($S_{11} \lt10$ dB) can be selected with high peak gain of 6dBi and good total efficiency of 89%. The omnidirectional radiation and beam-steered directional patterns (covering $360^{\circ})$ can be electronically tuned depending on the working states. The comparison to other state-of-the-art antennas shows that the proposed reconfigurable array has a compact size, high gain and easy to design. This proposed antenna is well suitable for future 5G sub-6GHz 5G compact base station.