Low Loss Cu/Co Metaconductor Based Array Antenna in Ka Band for 5G Applications

Performance enhanced array antennas are implemented using multilayer Cu/Co metaconductor in K
_a
band for 5G applications. A 4×4 array antenna has been designed and fabricated using 10 pairs of Cu/Co (150 nm/ 25 nm) nanolayers and its performance has been compared with a solid copper counterpart with the same overall dimensions. Due to eddy current cancellation and skin effect suppression, nearly 6 dB improvement in signal reception power has been demonstrated using the Cu/Co metaconductor based antenna compared to the solid Cu based antenna. The contribution of conductor loss has been extracted using signal path loss and Friis transmission equations. The effective RF conductivity of the Cu/Co metaconductor is nearly twice as large as that of the reference solid copper at 31 GHz.