ZTE Communications ›› 2020, Vol. 18 ›› Issue (3): 12-19.DOI: 10.12142/ZTECOM.202003003

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Multibeam Antenna Based on Butler Matrix for 3G/LTE/5G/B5G Base Station Applications

YE Lianghua1(), CAO Yunfei2, ZHANG Xiuyin2   

  1. 1.School of Physics and Optoelectronic Engineering, Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou 510600, China
    2.School of Electronic and Information Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510600, China.
  • Received:2020-08-06 Online:2020-09-25 Published:2020-11-03
  • About author:YE Lianghua (lianghuaye@gdut.edu.cn) received the B.S. degree in electronics and information engineering from Shandong University of Science and Technology, China in 2007, the M.S. degree in electronic and information engineering from South China University of Technology (SCUT), China in 2010. He is currently pursuing the Ph. D. degree with the School of Electronic and Information Engineering, SCUT. He is currently a full lecturer with the School of Physics and Optoelectronic Engineering, Guangdong University of Technology. His current research interests include wide band antennas, multiband antennas, and base station antennas.|CAO Yunfei received the B.E. degree in information engineering from South China University of Technology (SCUT), China in 2012, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical and electronic engineering from the University of Hong Kong, China in 2016. He is currently the Associate Research Fellow in the School of Electronic and Information Engineering of SCUT. He was a recipient of the Pearl River Talent Support Program for postdoctoral fellows. His current research interests include massive MIMO antenna, filtering antenna, reconfigurable antenna, and wearable antenna.|ZHANG Xiuyin received the B.S. degree in communication engineering from Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications, China in 2001, the M.S. degree in electronic engineering from South China University of Technology, China in 2006, and the Ph.D. degree in electronic engineering from City University of Hong Kong, China in 2009. He is currently a full professor and vice dean with the School of Electronic and Information Engineering, South China University of Technology. He has authored or coauthored more than 100 internationally referred journal papers including 70 IEEE Transactions. His research interests include microwave circuits and sub-systems, antennas and arrays. He has served as a Technical Program Committee (TPC) chair or member for a number of conferences. He was a recipient of the National Science Foundation for Distinguished Young Scholars of China and the Young Scholar of the Changjiang Scholars Program of Chinese Ministry of Education.

Abstract:

With the rapid development of mobile communication technology and the explosion of data traffic, high capacity communication with high data transmission rate is urgently needed in densely populated areas. Since multibeam antennas are able to increase the communication capacity and support a high data transmission rate, they have attracted a lot of research interest and have been actively investigated for base station applications. In addition, since multi-beam antennas based on Butler matrix (MABBMs) have the advantages of high gain, easy design and low profile, they are suitable for base station applications. The purposes of this paper is to provide an overview of the existing MABBMs. The specifications, principles of operation, design method and implementation of MABBMs are presented. The challenge of MABBMs for 3G/LTE/5G/B5G base station applications is discussed in the end.

Key words: multi-beam antenna, base station application, Butler matrix, wideband antenna, multi-band antenna