An Inclusive Survey on Array Antenna Design for Millimeter-Wave Communications

Abstract

The enormous growth of wireless data traffic in recent years has made the millimeter-wave (mm-wave) technology as a good fit for the high-speed communication systems. Extensive researches are continuing from the device to system, to the radio architecture, to the network to support the communication in mm-wave frequency ranges. To support this extensive high data rate, beam forming is found to be the key-enabling technology. Hence array antenna design is an extreme important issue. The beam-forming arrays are chosen to achieve the desired link capacity considering the high path loss and atmospheric loss at mm-wave frequencies and also to increase the coverage of the mm-wave communication system. There are diverse design challenges of the array due to the small size, use of large numbers of antennas in close vicinity, integration with radio frequency (RF) front ends, hardware constraints etc. This paper focuses on the evolution and development of mm-wave array antenna and its implementation for wireless communication and numerous other related areas. The scope of discussion is extended on the reported works in every sphere of mm-wave antenna array design including the selection of antenna elements, array configurations, feed mechanism, integration with front-end circuitry to understand the effects on system performance and the underlying reason of it. The new design aspects and research directions are unfolded as a result of this discussion.