Optically Controlled Reconfigurable Substrate Integrated Waveguide Slot Array Antenna for 5G Applications

In this paper, a reconfigurable standing-wave linear slot array antenna based on substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) technology is presented in 5G frequency band. Both the frequency tuning and the beam shaping can be obtained by incorporating photoconductive switches (PS) in the structure. To this end, a 6-slot SIW array is designed to operate at 29.8 GHz. Then the switches are applied to change the operation frequency to 28 GHz and attain the multibeam functionality. The results obtained by Ansoft HFSS and CST Studio Suite simulators are in close agreement with each other. Furthermore, the analytical results for the radiation patterns show good agreement with the numerical ones.

I. Introduction

During the past decades, the increasing demand for high-rate data transfer applications such as internet of things (IOT) has led the manufacturers to focus on replacing Fourth Generation (4G) of communication by Fifth Generation (5G) and beyond. In addition to the rate of the data transfer which is aimed to be about Gigabit per second (Gb/s), 5G communication follows the advanced goals of low delay time, cost efficient, and low profile systems. Operating frequency bands for 5G communication according to International Telecommunication Union (ITU) have been considered as (3.4-3.6) GHz, (5–6) GHz, (24.25-27.5) GHz, (37.5-40) GHz, and (66–76) GHz. Moreover, Federal Communication Commission (FCC) has introduced (27.5-28.35) GHz band as another authorized spectrum [1].