Photonics-Assisted Beamforming for 5G Communications

In the last year, beamforming has become a hot research topic, due to the perspective of its massive deployment in the RF access segment of future 5G mobile networks. This letter is a review of some possible implementations reported in the literature of photonic integrated circuits for the realization of phase shift (PS)-based beamforming networks for radio frequency signals, suitable for future 5G communications. The results demonstrate the possibility of ultrafast beamsteering reconfiguration (~1 ns), large applied PS (>400°), stable operation at high carrier frequencies (tens of gigahertz) over a wide signal bandwidth (~ 6 GHz), and low power consumption (tens of milliwatts).