A reconfigurable leaky-wave antenna and its application capable of electronically steering the beam within the entire hemisphere is presented. The original antenna is designed as a 1D array of conducting patches on a dielectric substrate coupled by varactors in series with interdigital capacitors. The beam of this antenna is driven by a DC bias that controls the capacitances of the varactor diodes over a frequency range from 8 to 8.2 GHz. Simulations showed a change in the direction of the main radiation pattern within 55° at 8 GHz by varying the varactor capacitances in the range of 0.1 to 1 pF. The maximum gain is 10 dBi and the side lobe level is -10 dB. The fabricated antenna sample operates at an applied DC voltage between 0 and 12 V, which corresponds to varactor capacitances controlled in the range of 1 to 0.15 pF. This gives a range of elevation angles equal to 40°. The application of the antenna in a reconfigurable star-type structure is proposed. The direction of the main lobe of the radiation pattern in azimuth is controlled by switching between the centrally excited eight antenna arrays using PIN diodes. The direction of radiation in elevation is controlled by the DC bias of the varactors of a particular array switched to “ON”. This complex beam steering throughout the hemisphere represents a novel character of the presented antenna. The antenna has a planar structure. Low-cost printed circuit board technology was used for its fabrication.

This paper introduces a method to realize beam switching by using a substrate-integrated waveguide (SIW) Butler matrix combined with a slot array antenna. The Butler matrix consists of two hybrid couplers, two crossovers, two −45-degree phase shifters, and two 0-degree phase shifters. The slot array antenna is a 4 × 2 array. The operating frequency band of the slot array antenna, where the reflection coefficient is below −10 dB, is 26.5–31.5 GHz. The measured beamforming angles from input port 1 to input Port 4 of the Butler matrix are +46, −16, +15, and −50°, respectively. The corresponding antenna gains from input Port 1 to input Port 4 are 11.57 dB, 14.284 dB, 10.94 dB, and 12.864 dB, respectively. The dimensions of the Butler matrix and the slot array antenna are 56.8 mm × 21.2 mm × 0.254 mm. The dimensions of the SIW transmission channels between the Butler matrix and input Ports 1– 4 are 16.9 mm × 34 mm × 0.254 mm.

Massive multiple input–multiple output (MIMO) antenna is required to meet the high data transmission rate in the current 5G and future 6G mobile communication. This paper presents a novel eight-port dual-band MIMO antenna operated within the 5G new radios N77 and N79 band. The designed MIMO incorporates a self-decoupling method to obtain high isolation of 22.96 and 25 dB at the two resonances 3.48 and 4.92 GHz, respectively. The basic antenna element consists of coupling between a staircase slot and a half-wavelength size loop branch. Additionally, an inverted U-shaped microstrip section is integrated with the radiating unit to serve the purpose of self-decoupling operation. The eight antennas are symmetrically located on the two narrow substrates (of size 5.8 × 150 mm2) as a pair of four arrays. The narrow substrates make the metal rim of the 5.5″ display mobile smartphone. The designed MIMO is practically realized and experimentally tested to validate the working mechanism. The envelope correlation coefficient and peak channel capacity are obtained as 0.174 and 35.5 bps/Hz in the lower frequency and 0.069 and 39.1 bps/Hz in the higher frequency.

In this paper, a wearable antenna array based on a 9 × 3 artificial magnetic conductor (AMC) array is proposed with the characteristics of compact, low profile, low specific absorption rate (SAR), high front-to-back ratio (FBR) and high gain for wireless body area network (WBAN) bands. The proposed wearable antenna consists of a four-element array and an AMC array. The size of antenna array loaded AMC is 137.7 × 45.9 mm2. The dielectric substrate of the antenna and the AMC structure are made of 0.1 mm liquid crystal polymer material, which is flexible and low profiled. The antenna operates from 5.62 to 6 GHz after the AMC structure is loaded. The gain increases by 3.23 dB, reaching 12.03 dB at 5.8 GHz. And the FBR value is raised by 26.04 dB. The highest SAR value of the simulated antenna on the human model is 0.0496 W/kg, far less than the US federal or EU requirements. After constructing and testing the antenna, the outcomes of the tests agreed with the results of the simulation. The flexible antenna array with AMC structure has good prospect in WBAN applications.

This paper presents a broadband circularly polarized (CP) antenna array for millimeter-wave applications, and the antenna array has the advantages of wide impedance bandwidth (IBW), novel CP design, and low profile. The antenna unit consists of a two-layer substrate and two pairs of magnetoelectric dipoles. Stepped microstrip lines coupled by rectangular slits form a feeder network for easy integration. The axial ratio bandwidth (ARBW) is extended because a pair of parasitic patches is loaded and an elliptical perturbation is added. The simulation results show that the antenna has an ARBW of 18.6% (26.4–31.9 GHz) and an IBW of 45.5% (20.6–32.7 GHz), with a gain greater than 7.11 dBic in the IBW. To improve the gain of the antenna, a 2 × 2 antenna array is designed, fabricated, and measured. The measured results show that the array has an ARBW of 16.6% (26.42–31.21 GHz), an IBW of 41.6% (22.28–33.97 GHz), a peak gain of 13.89 dBic in the IBW, the cross-polarization levels in the xoz-plane and yoz-plane are above 20 dB, and a radiation efficiency greater than 89%.

As the demand for high data rates is increasing day by day, fifth-generation (5G) becomes the leading-edge technology in wireless communications. The main objectives of the 5G communication system are to enhance the data rates (up to 20 Gbps) and capacity, ultra-low latency (1 ms), high reliability, great flexibility, and enhance device to device communication. The mentioned objectives lead to the hunting of the millimeter-wave frequency range which lies from 30 to 300 GHz for 5G wireless communications. To design such high capacity, low latency, and flexible systems, antenna design is one of the crucial parts. In this paper, a survey is presented on various antenna designs with their fabrication on different types of substrates such as Rogers RT/duroid 5880, Rogers RO4003C, Taconic TLY-5, etc., at different 5G frequency bands. The different configurations of antennas that covered antenna arrays, multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antennas, phased antennas, and beamforming antennas are discussed in detail with their applications. The design of MIMO antennas in the 5G frequency band occupied less space so mutual coupling reduction techniques are required for maintaining the required gain, efficiency, and isolation. This paper is also focused on the mutual coupling reduction techniques and diversity in MIMO antennas.

A novel concept of SIW cavity-backed dual inverted edge curved L slots antenna array with the defective ground plane is proposed in this paper. A linearly placed six-element inverted dual L slots array antenna is designed separated by a distance of 0.55λg to achieve high gain. Each pair of slots is separated by a column of the vias to form sub-cavities and those are fed individually. Defective ground structure (DGS) is introduced at the ground plane to manage the propagation of wave to the last slots in the array. The slots are enclosed by a SIW cavity of height 0.24λg in a single substrate. A measured peak gain of 8 dBi is achieved at 14.29 GHz. The antenna shows a front-to-back ratio of 24.9 dB. The design is also compared with various aspects to show the advantages of each element introduced in the design. The validity of the design is proved by the good agreement between the simulated and measured results. This novel design can be used to achieve the performance requirement of a satellite antenna working in Ku band.

This paper distinguishes the design and analysis of 3 × 2 circular microstrip patch probe array for specific absorption rate (SAR) measurement at quad-band. This novel approach consists of FR4 substrate radial dimension of 88 mm and it has six circular array elements with a radius of 17 mm; out of these six elements, three array elements are having rectangular slots with dimensions of 1.8 × 1.5 × 1.5 mm3. The array elements are coupled with six probes which have a dimension of 100 mm with a 2.5 mm tip radius; these six probes are embedded into a tissue-equivalent liquid-filled human head mannequin. In this mannequin, instantaneous SAR at any six positions has been investigated. The proposed design resonates at 1.8, 2.1, 2.4, and 2.5 GHz with a return loss of −11.53, −15.90, −15.73, and −25.49 dB. The circular microstrip probe array is fed by a 50 Ohm coaxial feed. In addition, the 3D human head model analysis is also presented. The precisely estimated SAR values are 0.135, 0.108, 0.167, and 0.244 W/kg at 1 g of tissue. For the traceable measurements, each source of uncertainty budget has been estimated.

This paper presents a broadband miniaturized Fabry–Perot cavity resonator antenna (CRA) made of novel electromagnetic bandgap (EBG) superstrate as partially reflecting surface (PRS) and reactive impedance surface (RIS) backed rectangular patch antenna. To the best of the authors' knowledge, the proposed EBG exhibits the highest stopband bandwidth (BW) with a bandgap existing between 7.37 and 12.4 GHz (50.9%). Frequency-selective property of the EBG is utilized under plane wave incidence to demonstrate it as PRS superstrate in CRA antenna. The cavity is excited with a rectangular microstrip antenna which is made of two dielectric substrates with an additional RIS layer sandwiched between them. The RIS provides wideband impedance matching of the primary feed antenna. A 7 × 7 array of the EBG superstrate is loaded over the patch antenna having an overall lateral dimension of only 45 × 45 mm2 or 1.62 λ0 × 1.62 λ0 where λ0 is the free space wavelength at the center frequency of 10.8 GHz. The proposed Fabry–Perot CRA (FP-CRA) achieves gain enhancement of 6.59 dB as compared with the reference antenna and has a 10 dB return loss BW of 23.79% from 10.07 to 12.79 GHz. A prototype of the FP-CRA is fabricated and experimentally tested with single and dual layers of EBG superstrate. Measured results show BWs of 21.5 and 24.8% for the two cases with peak realized gain of 12.05 and 14.3 dBi, respectively. Later a four-element antenna array with corporate feeding is designed as the primary feed of the CRA. The simulation result shows a flat gain of >13 dBi with gain variation <1.2 dB over the impedance BW of 13.2%.

A 16-element coplanar waveguide series fed hexagonal array antenna is proposed at millimeter-wave frequency range. In this paper, the analysis is initiated from a single-element hexagonal patch then extended to 1×2 array, 1×4 array, and 4×4 series fed hexagonal patch array antennas. The idea behind this design is to improve fractional bandwidth stage-wise with improved gain maintaining constant efficiency with all the structures. The 16-element array antenna is fabricated on Rogers RT Duriod 5880™ substrate with ɛr = 2.2 and 0.508 mm thickness. This array antenna exhibits low return loss at 28 GHz with a reflection coefficient value of −31.02 dB including almost 102% radiation efficiency and attained a maximum gain value of 8.98 dBi. The results are quite comparable with simulated 4×4 array antenna using the HFSS tool. The size of the proposed antenna is quite small which will be best suited for 5 G Femtobase stations to provide indoor communications at millimeter-wave frequencies.

Fifth-generation technology is not fully deployed in the world wireless communication till date. Millimeter-wave (mm-wave) band needs to be used due to plenty of available bandwidth and for achieving the goals of 5G such as greater data rate, ultra-high-speed video broadcasting, low latency services, and many more. Wideband antenna is required for 5G applications to access the high speed, low latency Internet services, and ultra-high-definition video streaming. Various bandwidth enhancement techniques have been reported by the researchers for microstrip antennas operating at microwave bands. High link losses, small wavelength, limited coverage, and environmental losses are the major challenges of mm-wave band. To mitigate these issues and satisfy 5G standard, an antenna with wide bandwidth, high gain, narrow steerable beam, high isolation, low side lobe levels, and multiband characteristics is required. Modifications in conventional antenna design techniques are required to achieve broader bandwidth along with stable radiation characteristics, improved gain, and low side lobe levels at mm-wave frequencies. This paper presents the survey of various bandwidth enhancement techniques which has been used in the 5G antennas designed by researchers. Reviews of some wideband 5G antennas with their performance comparisons are also discussed.

The paper presents a 1 × 2 B-shaped antenna array for dual-band operation at 4 and 8 GHz. The antenna design consists of a rectangular patch with two annular-strip lines fabricated on the top layer and finite ground plane on the bottom layer. The array is formed by designing an optimum T-shaped microstrip line for impedance matching. The dimensions of the antenna array are 78 × 36 × 1.6 mm3. Full-wave simulations have been conducted and the measured results are in good consent with the simulated results. The measured impedance bandwidth (reference −10 dB) has been observed at 3.84–4.16 and 7.78–8.38 GHz. Measured peak gain and radiation efficiency at 4 and 8 GHz are 8.3, 9.4 dB and 82.5 and 81.2%, respectively.

In mathematical definition, a fractal is a self-similar subset of Euclidean space whose fractal dimension strictly exceeds its topological dimension which in turn involves a recursive generating methodology that results in contours with infinitely intricate fine structures. Fractal geometry has been used to model complex natural objects such as clouds coastlines, etc., that has space-filling properties. In the past years, several groups of scientists around the globe tried to implement the structure of fractal geometry for applications in the field of electromagnetism, which led to the development of new innovative antenna configurations called “fractal antennas” which is primarily focused in fractal antenna elements, and fractal antenna arrays. It has been demonstrated that by exploiting the recursive nature of fractals, several marvellous kinds of properties can be observed in antennas and arrays. The primary focus of this article is to provide a compressed overview of the developments in fractal-shaped antennas as well as arrays over the last few decades where the most prominent contributions mostly from IEEE journals have been highlighted. The open intention of this review work is to show an encouraging path to antenna researchers for its advancement using fractal geometries.

This paper presents a compact octagonal array of microstrip patch antennas for direct broadcast satellite (DBS) (12.2–12.7 GHz) services. The proposed single element of this array is a new fractal antenna, having considerably high gain and can heavily suppress cross polarization along the main beam direction. The single element is derived from a 2D spiral geometry. The corporate feed network of the array is designed in such a manner to make the structure very compact. The fabricated single element resonates at 12.51 GHz and gives a gain and bandwidth of 9.32 dBi and 280 MHz, respectively. The array resonates at 12.46 GHz and gives gain of 17.67 dBi and a bandwidth of 506 MHz, which ensures a 100% coverage of the entire DBS service band. The measured cross polarization of single element and array along the direction of main beam are −45.50 and −43.35 dB, respectively. Both the single element as well as the array maintains a reasonably good radiation efficiency of 86.70 and 82.20%, respectively.

Microwave imaging is an efficient technique that can be used for the early detection of breast cancer. Therefore the current research article presents the microwave imaging of two spherical tumors (radius 4 and 5 mm) in the breast phantom by using the monostatic radar-based technique. This is carried out by using an ultra-wideband (4.9–10.9 GHz), three-layered stacked aperture coupled microstrip antenna (SACMPA) with a defected ground structure to scan the breast phantom and make near field S parameter measurements from a breast phantom. The S parameter data from different locations and at different time intervals are noted and then used in a beam-forming algorithm; Delay and Sum to process it and form a 2D image of the tumor location in the breast phantom using MATLAB.

The proposed SACMPA is a three-layered structure with overall dimensions of 37 × 43 × 4.85 mm3 that shows an impedance bandwidth of 6 GHz (4.9–10.9 GHz) and a simulated peak gain of 6.32 dB at a frequency of 9.1 GHz. The validation of S parameters and gain results are done using a Vector Network Analyzer (VNA) and an anechoic chamber. The experimental validation of the proposed microwave imaging procedure is done by allowing the SACMPA to radiate parallel to the breast phantom made from polythene (skin), petroleum jelly (fat), and wheat flour (with water as tumor) and record the S parameters on the VNA. The proposed microwave method is safe for human exposure as the antenna also shows simulated specific absorption rates of 0.271 and 1.115 W/Kg (on the breast phantom) at frequencies of 5.7 and 6.5 GHz, respectively (for 1 g of body tissue).

This paper presents compact rectenna arrays for ambient RF energy harvesting on the 2.45 GHz ISM band. The arrays are based on four and nine series-connected rectenna cells. Each cell is composed of a stacked fractal antenna and an RF-to-dc conversion circuit. The antenna is a compact third Koch fractal shape, fed by a coaxial probe for more compactness. The conversion circuit is a full-wave rectifier with a differential output, each DC polarity is provided by a two-stage Dickson voltage multiplier. Measurement results show a significant increase of the output DC voltage for the one, four, and nine cells rectenna arrays. They provide, for power density of 1.7 μW/cm2, an output DC voltage of 0.9, 2.2, and 4.1 Volts, respectively. The 9 cells rectenna array is used in a remote supply experiment of a temperature and acceleration wireless sensor, where the data are transmitted via a Bluetooth low energy link to a distant smartphone every 1 min.

This paper presents two modifications of compressive sensing (CS)-based approach applied to the near-field diagnosis of active phased arrays. CS-based antenna array diagnosis allows a significant reduction of measurement time, which is crucial for the characterization of electrically large active antenna arrays, e.g. used in synthetic aperture radar. However, practical implementation of this method is limited by two factors: first, it is sensitive to thermal instabilities of the array under test, and second, excitation reconstruction accuracy strongly depends on the accuracy of the elements of the measurement matrix. First proposed modification allows taking into account of thermal instability of the array by using an iterative ℓ1-minimization procedure. The second modification increases the accuracy of reconstruction using several simple additional measurements.

In this paper, a compact wideband tightly-coupled dipole antenna array has been developed. Dipole elements are placed in the triangular lattice to reduce the side lobe level in the radiation pattern of one of the planes. To obtain the initial dimensions, 1-D infinite array analysis of the proposed array is carried out. The infinite array is designed to operate in 5–14.3 GHz (96.3% impedance bandwidth) frequency band. The antenna array can be used in C and X band applications. Inter-element coupling is utilized to achieve ultra-wideband performance in the proposed array. A 2 × 8 elements finite array is designed with the feed network. An ultra-wideband parallel strip to microstrip transition is used to feed the array elements. A metallic shielding for the feed network helps in reducing the back lobes. The overall size of the array with the reflector and the feed network is 148 mm × 224 mm × 54.5 mm. To validate the proposed concept, the antenna array is fabricated and tested. Impedance bandwidth of 2.8:1 along with broadside radiation pattern throughout the band of interest is observed.

To utilize the manipulation of wave properties by metamaterials, in this paper, a microstrip-fed patch antenna array, loaded with metamaterial superstrate, has been proposed. Under unloaded conditions, the conventional patch antenna array resonates at IEEE 802.16a 5.8 GHz Wi-MAX band with gain of 4.31 dBi and bandwidth of 425 MHz, whereas when each patch of this array is loaded with a metamaterial superstrate, composed with the pair of circular split ring resonators and wire strips, gain and bandwidth approaches to 11.9 dBi and 685 MHz, respectively, which corresponds to gain improvement by 7.6 dBi and bandwidth enhancement of 260 MHz. The proposed antenna is fabricated and tested to compare simulated and measured results. A good compliance is observed between these two results. Equivalent circuit model of the composite structure has been developed and analyzed.