Millimeter Wave Beam Steerable/Reconfigurable Liquid Metal Array Antenna

Abstract

Users within mobile networks require ever increasing data rates. However, the frequency spectrum, reserved for mobile networks, is highly saturated. The millimeter wave spectrum, by contrast is relatively under utilised. Nonetheless, this area of the spectrum suffers from higher propagation losses, necessitating the use of highly directional antennas. To support mobility these antennas require beam steering capabilities. For several applications wide beam scanning capability is required. A valuable approach for increasing the beam scanning range is to use element factor plus array factor control [1]. Although several authors have presented designs based on this approach the lobe performance of those antennas is generally quite poor. In this paper we seek to address that issue.