5G Millimeter Wave Active Phased-Array Antenna Active Load Pulling Evaluation on Power Amplifiers

Phased-array antennas, such as the ones presently developed for 5G millimeter wave (mmW) applications, are concentrating a high density of radiating elements to provide high gain, high directivity, and beam forming capabilities to efficiently address the user equipments (UE). The proximity of a large number of radiating elements creates mutual couplings (MC) responsible for undesirable active load pulling (ALP) that affects the single element power amplifiers (PA) performances. This paper proposes an analysis of the mutual coupling effects that occurs in the context of 5G mmW base station phased array antennas. Active load-pulling and its variation versus the beam steering angle are evaluated. The introduced methodology can be used to determine the exact perturbation the PAs will experience to yield to a phased array antenna / PA co-design.