Design of Millimeter-Wave Antenna-in-Package (AiP) for 5G NR

doi:10.12142/ZTECOM.202003005

ZTE Communications ›› 2020, Vol. 18 ›› Issue (3): 26-32.DOI: 10.12142/ZTECOM.202003005

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Design of Millimeter-Wave Antenna-in-Package (AiP) for 5G NR

CHANG Su-Wei(), LIN Chueh-Jen, TSAI Wen-Tsai, HUNG Tzu-Chieh, HUANG Po-Chia

TMY Technology Inc. , New Taipei City, Taiwan 235, China

Received:2020-06-16 Online:2020-09-25 Published:2020-11-03
About author:CHANG Su-Wei (swchang@tmytek.com) received the M.S. degree in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA in 2018. He worked in Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy & Astrophysics (ASIAA) in Taiwan, China as a microwave/sub-mmWave receiver engineer, where he was involved in developing the mmWave and sub-mmWave receiver system for international radio telescopes. In 2014, he founded TMYTEK and is currently the president and CEO. His research interests include noise, cryogenic circuits and applications, silicon-based RFIC and MMIC up to mmWave bands. He has 45 SCI publications with more than 500 citations.|LIN Chueh-Jen is a serial entrepreneur who has founded three companies since 2007. He is the VP and co-founder of TMYTEK, a start-up company that focuses on 5G mmWave solutions. He leads the software technology and marketing teams and helped the company successfully raise pre-A and A funds. Before TMYTEK, he founded Scarlet Tech, a successful IoT company still running today. He ever worked for the smartphone maker HTC and cooperated with Microsoft and Qualcomm closely in software and wireless communications. He built the world’s largest infrared telescope (WIRCam) for CFHT in Hawaii in the first job. He received the master’s degree in electronics engineering on Quantum dots IR detectors from Chiao-Tung University, Taiwan, China.|TSAI Wen-Tsai received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Kaohsiung Marine University, Taiwan, China in 2002, and the M.S. degree in electrical engineering from Feng Chia University, Taiwan, China in 2004. He has five years of experience in the antenna-related design, including the wireless local-area network (WLAN) antenna, global position system (GPS) antenna, mmWave circuit, 5G small cell, 5G AiP module, mobile antenna and antenna diversity. Moreover, he set up the far-field antenna pattern measurement systems (in anechoic chamber) and control program and has nine-to-ten years of experience in the design of Ku and Ka bands circuits, as well as the design, fabrication and measurement of low-noise amplifiers, mixers, filters, phase-lock loop (PLL) and dielectric resonant oscillator (DRO) circuits, integrated the horn antennas. He also has rich experience in HSpice simulation of active circuits.|HUNG Tzu-Chieh received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Feng Chia University, Taiwan, China in 2006, and the M.S. degree in electrical engineering from Central University, Taiwan, China in 2008. During college, he participated in ASIAA student program and joined the Yuan-Tseh Lee Array (YTLA, formerly AMiBA) project. He started his professional career at Lite-On technology Inc. in 2009, where he was an antenna designer. From 2013–2015, he was an RF engineer with Ubiqconn technology Inc. In March 2015, he joined TMYTEK Inc. as a RF/mmWave system designer and has become an R&D manager in February 2020. His research interests include mmWave circuit design and system integration.|HUANG Po-Chia has rich experience in embedded system software development and digital signal processing and now focuses on software system and architecture design with TMYTEK. Before TMYTEK, he joined Scarlet Tech at the end of 2014 for building up IoT solutions in safety industry. His expertise is in MCU programming and a variety of protocol stacks for wireless technologies, such as BLE and LoRa. In 2011, he worked at HTC and took responsibility of mobile graphic framework and relevant BSP for a customized mobile OS on Qualcomm Snapdragon 600. He received the master’s degree in electrical and control engineering on DSP and embedded system development from Chia-Tung University, Taiwan, China.

Abstract

Abstract:

For 5G new radio (NR), there are two frequency bands: Frequency Range 1 (FR?1) (low frequency) and Frequency Range 2 (FR?2) (millimeter?wave frequency). Millimeter?wave has been officially utilized in mobile applications. The wide bandwidth is the key for the millimeter-wave band. However, higher loss has become the major challenge for the wide use of this frequency range. Antenna array and beamforming technologies have been introduced to resolve the path loss and coverage problems. The key design considerations of the beamforming antenna array are low loss, compact system and small size. Antenna-in-package (AiP) has become the most attractive technology for millimeter-wave front-end system. For the design of AiP, many parameters such as RF transition, material and heat need to be considered and designed properly. The Over?the?Air (OTA) testing technology is also very critical for AiP mass production. In this paper, the detail of AiP design and new OTA testing technology are discussed and demonstrated.

Key words: 5G, antenna?in?package (AiP), beamforming, FR-2, millimeter?wave, new radio (NR), phased-array, low temperature cofired ceramic (LTCC)

CHANG Su-Wei, LIN Chueh-Jen, TSAI Wen-Tsai, HUNG Tzu-Chieh, HUANG Po-Chia. Design of Millimeter-Wave Antenna-in-Package (AiP) for 5G NR[J]. ZTE Communications, 2020, 18(3): 26-32.

Figures/Tables 10

Figure 1 System context diagram of AiP design parameters.

Figure 2 Three different system architectures of antenna?in?package (AiP) design.

Table 1 Beamforming design considerations and TMYTEK’s capability

Index	Consideration	TMYTEK’s Capability
Tx Power	Output power of each element	18 dBm for 28 GHz 15 dBm for 39 GHz
Frequency	Meeting operator’s frequency bands	n257, n258, n260, n261 Ranges from 24 to 41 GHz
Rx NF	Better system sensitivity provided by lower noise floor	4.5 dBm in 28 GHz 6.5 dBm for 39 GHz.
Phase	Phase difference is the basic of beamforming； step size and error are the key considerations.	6-bit phase shifter ±3° RMS phase error

Figure 4 High density interconnects (HDI) type III structure[5].

Figure 5 Traditional Over-the-Air (OTA) chamber system.

Figure 6 Compact antenna test range (CATR) chamber system.

Figure 7 New over-the-air (OTA) system.

Figure 8 Three layers of the 26-layer low temperature cofired ceramic (LTCC) antenna-in-package front-end module: antenna, filter and combiner.

Figure 9 Top and bottom view of the 26-layer low temperature cofired ceramic (LTCC) 4 × 4 antenna-in-package front-end module for 28 GHz band.

Figure 10 8 × 8 phased array system integrated with four antenna-in-package front-end modules.

References 12

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Design of Millimeter-Wave Antenna-in-Package (AiP) for 5G NR

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