3-D-Printed Circular Array for WiMAX Base Station

Circular arrays offer the ability to form directional beams throughout a full 360° of azimuth coverage without the drawbacks of beam broadening and/or scan loss. These advantages make them an attractive choice for a Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) base station antenna where the directional beams in any arbitrary direction facilitate range extension and throughput. In this letter, we demonstrate a metal plated-on-plastic 3-D-printed circular array that provides a low-cost design with simple manufacturing and provides performance suitable for WiMAX base station operation from 5.1 to 5.8 GHz.