NEW ANTENNA TECHNOLOGY FOR 5G WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS
Design and Implementation of An Active Multibeam
Antenna System with 64 RF Channels and 256
Antenna Elements for Massive MIMO Application in
5G Wireless Communications
PANG Xingdong, HONG Wei, YANG Tianyang, LI Linsheng
State Key Laboratory of Millimeter Waves, Southeast University, Nanjing210096, P.R.China
Abstract: This paper focuses on the design
and implementation of an active multibeam
antenna system for massive MIMO
applications in 5G wireless communications.
The highly integrated active multibeam
antenna system is designed and implemented
at 5.8 GHz with 64 RF Channels and 256
antenna elements. The 64-channel highly
integrated active multibeam antenna system
provides a verification platform for digital
beamforming algorithm and massive MIMO
channel estimation for next generation
wireless communications.
Keywords: 5G; active multibeam antenna
system; digital beamforming; Massive MIMO;
5G wireless communications
I. INTRODUCTION
Mobile communication is one of the fast-
est growing and most dynamic fields in the
world, which has greatly improved the com-
munications between people in both business
operations and social life and promoted the
economy development and human progress.
More and more people crave faster wireless
internet access service, trendier smart mobile
phones and instant communication with others
or access to information. The fourth genera-
China Communications • November 2014
tion (4G) Long Term Evolution (LTE) mobile
communication systems have been deployed
in some countries, in which several key
techniques are used such as orthogonal fre-
quency-division multiplexing (OFDM), mul-
tiple-input multiple-output (MIMO), and link
adaptation technologies. 4G wireless networks
can support data rates of up to 1 Gbps for low
mobility, such as nomadic/local wireless ac-
cess, and up to 100 Mbps for high mobility,
such as mobile access [1].
There are still some challenges that cannot
be accommodated by 4G, such as the spectrum
crisis and high energy consumption. There is
hardly any spectrum below 3 GHz available
for providing new communication services.
Moving to higher frequencies for traditional
outdoor mobile communication systems have
been associated with some challenges, which
include Line of Sight (LoS) directional com-
munication, higher path loss, poor RF effi-
ciency and so on [2]. With the deployment of
advanced wireless techniques, the increase of
energy consumption in 4G wireless commu-
nication systems leads to an increase of CO2
emission indirectly, which is considered as a
major threat for the environment and climate
warming. Moreover, high energy consumption
of base stations (BSs) has increased the cost of
16

A highly integrated
multi-beam antenna
system at 5.8 GHz
with 64 RF transceiver
channels are de-
signed, implemented
and measured. The
measured results
demonstrate the good
performance.
1 d
RF
Front-end Front-end
x1
W*1
Fig.1 The conceptual diagram of digital beamforming
Fig.2 The verification platform architecture of Massive MIMO system
17
mobile communication operators. such as video traffic and online games are
The recent explosion in mobile data traffic making a foray into mobile devices, which
with smart mobile phones, iPads and other were earlier confined to wired transmission.
mobile media devices have severely strained Video traffic is expected to increase to 67
the available network capacity of current percent of the mobile traffic volume by 2018,
3G/4G systems. It is predicted by the Wire- which constituted 53 percent in 2013 [4]. Ul-
less World Research Forum (WWRF) that 7 tra high definition (UHD) video, 3D video and
trillion wireless devices will serve 7 billion virtual reality services will be increasingly
people by 2017, which means the number popular in the near future.
of network-connected wireless devices will Mobile communication service providers
reach 1000 times the population of the world have been facing the continuously increasing
[3]. Globally, mobile data traffic will increase demand for higher data rates, higher energy
11-fold between 2013 and 2018[4]. The band- efficiency, larger network capacity and higher
width-intensive immersive media services mobility required by new wireless applica-
tions and therefore have started to research
on next generation (5G) mobile communica-
tion that are expected to be deployed beyond
2020. It is widely agreed that compared to the
4G network, the 5G network should achieve
1000 times the system capacity, 10 times the
Nd
Ndcosθ
spectral efficiency, energy efficiency and data
2d
2dcosθ rates (i.e., peak data rate of 10 Gbps for low
d
dcosθ
θB mobility and peak data rate of 1 Gbps for
2 3 N high mobility), and 25 times the average cell
throughput [1]. Researchers have started to
RF RF RF investigate potential 5G cellular architectures
Front-end Front-end
and key technologies, which involve ultra
x2 x3 xN
dense heterogeneous network, self organi-
W*2 W*3 W*N
zation network, massive MIMO, filter-bank
based on multicarrier (FBMC), full duplex
technology and so on [5]-[6].
As one of the most effective means to
improve the system spectrum efficiency,
transmission reliability and data rate, MIMO
technology has been used in Wi-Fi (IEEE
802.11n/ac/ad/aj), WiMAX (IEEE 802.16e),
4G (LTE/LTE-A) and other wireless commu-
nication systems. For most MIMO implemen-
tations, only a few (i.e., less than 10) antennas
are employed in the base station (BS) and
the corresponding improvement is relatively
modest. In 2010, Thomas L. Marzetta studied
multi-user MIMO (MU-MIMO) systems with
multi-cellular time-division duplex (TDD) sce-
nario, in which each base station is equipped
with very large number of antennas, proposed
the massive MIMO concept and found some
new characteristics different from convention-
China Communications • November 2014
al MIMO systems with single-cellular limited Table I Performance requirement
number of antennas [7]. In massive MIMO Performance Requirements
systems, the BSs are equipped with a large Frequency band(GHz) 5.7—5.9
number of antennas (tens or hundreds) and Operation mode TDD
the total system capacity will approximately Noise figure ≤7dB
linearly increase with the minimum number of Receiver gain >60dB
transmitter and receiver antennas. The anten- Channel bandwidth(MHz) 20 or 40
na array beam of massive MIMO system can Phase noise of reference clock -95dBc@10KHz(typical)
be concentrated in a narrow range based on The maximum linear transmitting power 15dBm
beamforming technology, which may greatly ACPR -40dBc@40MHz
reduce the interference. Furthermore, the great I/Q level TX:700mVp-p;RX:1Vp-p
array gain can be acquired in massive MIMO Antenna gain 10dBi
system, which reduces the constraints on VSWR ≤1.5
linearity and accuracy of transmit power and 3dB beam range 90º
improves the RF power efficiency, and makes
it possible that massive MIMO system can be
built with cheap and low power components
signal are expressed as [11]
[8]-[10]. The key technology of the massive
MIMO is the active multibeam antenna system
which consists of tens even hundreds antenna
elements and transceivers. To form the kth beam, the complex weighted
Massive MIMO relies on spatial multiplex- coefficient Wik is given by
ing and a simple method for spatial multiplex- (3)
ing is to deploy linear precoding (i.e., beam- Then the weights Wk of the kth beam received
forming). Compared to several beamforming signal vector is defined as
implementation methods in radio frequency
(4)
(RF), intermediate frequency (IF) and local
The output Dk(θ) of the digital beamforming
oscillator (LO), digital beamforming (DBF)
system is described by [12]
technology has the advantages of adaptive
control, flexibility, and accuracy. DBF tech- (5)
nology is based on the beamforming principle where |Dk(θ)| is the radiation patter of the kth
of radar antennas and established with the de- beam.
velopment of advanced digital signal process- The massive MIMO systems based on
ing, by which transmitting and receiving the analog and hybrid beamforming structures
useful signal can be implemented with high- have been investigated a lot [13]-[15], while
gain narrow beam generated in the direction there are many challenges associated with im-
of useful signal and null steering generated in plementing massive MIMO based on digital
the direction of interference. The conceptual beamforming [16]-[18]. This paper focuses on
diagram of digital beamforming is shown in the design and implementation of the active
Fig. 1. multibeam antenna system for massive MIMO
The received signal vector of the antenna based on digital beamforming technology. A
array with N elements is defined as X, highly integrated active multibeam system
(1) at 5.8 GHz with 64 RF channels is designed,
implemented and measured, which provides a
Where xi refers to the complex signal re-
verification platform for digital beamforming
ceived by the ith element.
algorithm and massive MIMO channel estima-
(2)
tion in the baseband for next generation wire-
The amplitude and phase of the ith received less communication.

China Communications • November 2014 18

Fig.3 The transceiver RF front-end block diagram
II. DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF
64-CHANNEL MASSIVE MIMO SYSTEM
2.1 The architecture of the active
multibeam antenna system
Apart from analog or hybrid digital and ana-
log beamfroming structures [2],[13]-[15], the
proposed verification platform architecture for
digital beamforming algorithm and massive
MIMO channel estimation for next generation
wireless communication is shown in Fig. 2,
which consists of 64-RF channels and 256 an-
tenna elements, high speed interface board and
digital baseband processing system.
RF signal received from each antenna is
filtered, amplified and directly demodulated
into I/Q baseband signals by two orthogonal
LO signals (i.e., quadrature demodulation) in
the receiver RF front-end, which are filtered
through low pass filters in baseband. All the
received I/Q analog signals are conversed into
digital signals by A/D converters in high speed
interface board and transmitted to digital
beamforming unit of the baseband processing
19
system through SFP interface, in which the
high-gain narrow beam is generated in the
direction of useful signal and null steering is
generated in the direction of interference ac-
cording to digital beamforming algorithm. The
processing of transmitting signals is opposite.
2.2 Performance of the 64-channel
multibeam antenna system
The performance requirements on the 64-chan-
nel multibeam antenna system are shown at
Table I.
2.3 RF front-end design
The hardware of the 64-channel 5.8 GHz
transceiver RF front-ends consists of 8 PCB
boards and on each PCB 8-channel transceiver
RF front-ends and antenna arrays with 32(8 ｘ
4) elements are integrated. The design block
diagram with the scheme of zero intermedi-
ate frequency transceiver is shown in Fig. 3,
in which each highly integrated receiver or
transmitter chip with built-in PLL support 4
receiving or transmitting channels respective-
ly. Individual PCB board requires two group
China Communications • November 2014
transceiver chips. Each RF frond-end includes
a switch, RF filters, a low power amplifier
(LNA), power amplifier, etc. The operation of
8-channel transceiver RF front-ends is con-
trolled by the microcontroller unit (MCU).
Through the simulation for receiver with
APPCAD software, the results are shown in
Fig. 4. The noise figure of the receiver is 5.08
dB and the gain is 68.5 dB, which meet the RF
requirements of the receiver.
According to the digital beamforming
principle, the phase difference between each
channel received (or transmitted) signal and
the local oscillator signal should be the same,
so the same 40MHz reference clock is used in
64-channel RF front-ends. The reference clock Fig.4 The simulated result of receiver RF front-end
signal collected to phase-locked loop built-in
the receiver and transmitter chip is amplified
from the oscillator and divided into 8 paral-
lel ports through power division network of
lumped parameter elements.

2.4 1×4 Antenna arrays design

Microstrip patch antenna array is fabricated
through standard PCB process, which has the fea-
ture of flexible integration ability and high gain. Fig.5 The patch antenna structure of 1×4 antenna array

To obtain high gain, 1x4 antenna array

structure is used in the antenna connected
to each RF front-end, which consists of 4
microstrip rectangular patches and T-shape
power division networks. In order to increase
the antenna bandwidth, two slots along the
polarization are etched on the inset fed mi-
crostrip patch antenna. The length of the two
slots should be adjusted to form another reso-
nant frequency and extend the bandwidth [19].
The microstrip antenna array is fabricated on
TLX-8 substrate (εr=2.55) with 1mm thickness
as shown in Fig. 5. The distance between ad-
jacent antennas should be less than λ to avoid
the appearance of grating lobe and be more
than λ/2 to reduce the coupling, therefore it is Fig.6 The simulated and measured radiation pattern
defined as 0.77λ.
The simulated radiation pattern is shown in
2.5 Implementation of 64-channel
Fig. 6. The antenna array resonates at 5.8GHz and
multibeam antenna system
the impedance bandwidth is 200 MHz. The sim-
ulated gain of the antenna array reaches 13dBi, The 64-channel multibeam antenna system
which meets the requirement of the system. consists of 8 PCB boards with 6 layers. In-

China Communications • November 2014 20

 dividual PCB includes 8-channel RF front-
ends and antenna arrays with 32 elements,
which is fabricated on a hybrid PCB. 8 RF
front-ends and 32 antenna elements are inte-
grated on both sides of the individual PCB,
which dramatically reduces the physical size
of the multibeam antenna system. The di-
mension (length×width) of individual PCB is
320mm×215mm, as shown in Fig. 7.

III. MEASUREMENT OF THE

64-CHANNEL MULTIBEAM ANTENNA
SYSTEM

3.1 Measurement of the 1×4

antenna array
Fig.7 8-channel RF front-ends and antenna arrays integrated on individual PCB
The measurement of a 1×4 antenna arrays is
shown in Fig. 6. The gain of the antenna array
reaches 11dBi, which meets the requirement
of the system. The difference between the
simulation and measurement of the radiation
pattern should be caused by the coupling of
adjacent antenna arrays.

3.2 Measurement of the transmitter

rf front-end
The measured IMD3 and ACPR are shown
in Fig. 8 and Fig. 9 when the output power is
15dBm. The measurements demonstrate that
the linear performance of transmitter RF front-
Fig.8 The measured IMD3 @output power=15dBm
end meets the requirements of the system.

3.3 Measurement of the receiver RF

front-end
Error Vector Magnitude (EVM) is used to
quantify the performance of a digital radio
transmitter or receiver, which provides a
comprehensive index to indicate the phase
and amplitude errors. Digital beamforming
technology requires that the performance of
each transmitter or receiver channel should be
identical, therefore the RF front-end should
have an excellent performance on EVM. The
EVM measurement of receiver RF front-end
is shown in Fig. 10, which meets the require-
ment of the system.
Fig.9 The measured ACPR @output power=15dBm (QPSK)

21 China Communications • November 2014

IV. BEAMFORMING SIMULATION FOR
ANTENNA ARRAYS

The antenna arrays with 256 elements of

64-channel multibeam antenna system are
shown in Fig. 11, which can increase the array
gain of 18dB (i.e., 10log64).
The essential of digital beamforming tech-
nology is adjusting the phase and amplitude of
each I/Q signals exciting to control the direc-
tion of the beam. The beam sweep of the 64x4
antenna arrays from -30° to 30° with interval
of 10° is shown in Fig. 12.
Fig.10 The measured EVM of receiver RF front-end (QPSK)
V. CONCLUSIONS

This paper focuses on design and implementa-

tion of a active multibeam antenna system for
massive MIMO applications based on digital
beamforming technology. A highly integrated
multibeam antenna system at 5.8 GHz with 64 Fig.11 The antenna arrays with 256 elements of 64-channel multibeam antenna
RF transceiver channels is designed, imple- system
mented and measured. The measured results
demonstrate the good performance of the mul-
tibeam antenna system with 64 RF transceiver
channels and 256 antenna elements, which
meets the requirements of massive MIMO
system. The 64-channel highly integrated mul-
tibeam antenna system provides a verification
platform for digital beamforming algorithm
and massive MIMO channel estimation in the
baseband for next generation wireless commu-
nication. Calibration technique for receiving
and transmitting channel and digital beam-
forming algorithm are focuses of our ongoing
research.

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Biographies
PANG Xingdong, received the M.S. degree in
electromagnetic and microwave engineering from
Southeast University (SEU), Nanjing, China, in 2004.
He worked on R&D in Greast Communication Tech.
CO., Ltd. from 2004 to 2013. He is now working to-
ward the Ph. D. degree in the State Key Laboratory
of Millimeter Waves, Southeast University (SEU). His
current researches include RF techniques for wireless
communications and the Internet of Things.
HONG Wei (M’92–SM’07–F’12), received the B.S.
degree from the University of Information Engineer-
ing, Zhengzhou, China, in 1982, and the M.S. and
Ph.D. degrees from Southeast University, Nanjing,
China, in 1985 and 1988, respectively, all in radio en-
gineering. Since 1988, he has been with the State Key
Laboratory of Millimeter Waves where he serves as
the Director since 2003, and is currently a Professor
and Vice Dean of the School of Information Science
and Engineering, Southeast University. In 1993, 1995,
1996, 1997, and 1998, he was a short-term Visiting
Scholar with the University of California at Berkeley
and at Santa Cruz, respectively. He has authored
and coauthored over 300 technical publications, and
authored two books. He has been engaged in nu-
merical methods for electromagnetic problems, milli-
meter wave theory and technology, antennas, and RF
technology for wireless communications. Dr. Hong is
a Fellow of CIE, Vice-Presidents of the Microwave So-
ciety and Antenna Society of CIE, AdCom member of
IEEE MTT-S, and served as an Associate Editor of the
IEEE Trans. On MTT during 2007–2010.
YANG Tianyang (S’10), received the B.S. degree
from the Henan Normal University; Xinxiang, China
in 2006.He is now working toward the Ph. D. degree
in School of Information Science and Engineer-
ing, Southeast University (SEU), Nanjing China. His
current researches include microwave and millime-
ter-wave antenna and array design.
LI Linsheng (S’09), received the B. Eng. degree and
Ph. D in information engineering from Southeast
University (SEU), Nanjing, China, in 2007 and 2014.
His current research interests include active integrat-
ed antenna for wireless communications and radio
propagation measurement and modeling.
China Communications • November 2014