Demo: A Transparent Antenna System for In-Building Networks

For in-building networks, the potential of transparent antennas, which are used as windows of a building, is presented in this paper. In this scenario, a transparent window antenna communicates with outdoor devices or base stations, and the indoor repeaters act as relay stations of the transparent window antenna for indoor devices. At indoor, back lobe waves of the transparent window antenna are defined as interference to in-building networks. Hence, we analyze different SIR and SINR results according to the location of an indoor repeater through 3D ray tracing system-level simulation. Furthermore, a link-level simulation through a full-duplex software-defined radio platform with the fabricated transparent antenna is presented to examine the feasibility of the transparent antenna.

Beam Squint in Ultra-wideband mmWave Systems: RF Lens Array vs. Phase-Shifter-Based Array

In this article, we discuss the potential of radio frequency (RF) lens for ultra-wideband millimeter-wave (mmWave) systems. In terms of the beam squint, we compare the proposed RF lens antenna with the phase shifter-based array for hybrid beamforming. To reduce the complexities for fully digital beamforming, researchers have come up with RF lens-based hybrid beamforming. The use of mmWave systems, however, causes an increase in bandwidth, which gives rise to the beam squint phenomenon. We first find the causative factors for beam squint in the dielectric RF lens antenna. Based on the beamforming gain at each frequency, we verify that, in a specific situation, RF lens can be free of the beam squint effect. We use 3D electromagnetic analysis software to numerically interpret the beam squint of each antenna type. Based on the results, we present the degraded spectral efficiency by system-level simulations with 3D indoor ray tracing. Finally, to verify our analysis, we fabricate an actual RF lens antenna and demonstrate the real performance using a mmWave, NI PXIe, software-defined radio system.