Design of dual-band circularly polarised array antenna package for 5G mobile terminals with beam-steering capabilities

Here, a new design of phased-array antenna for future fifth-generation mobile phone applications is presented. The proposed phased array consists of 12 dual-band circularly polarised antenna elements at 28/38 GHz used to form a linear array in the edges region (top-side, right, and left sides) on a mobile phone circuit board. The measured and simulated results show that the designed antenna element has a reflection coefficient less than -15 dB in the assigned frequency bands of 28/38 GHz with a realised antenna gain of 7.68 and 7.73 dB, respectively. Furthermore, the performance of the array antenna package in the vicinity of user's head-hand has been investigated in this study at different scenarios. The designed array antenna achieved good matching impedance with high isolation between the array elements. Moreover, an acceptable realised gain of 16.85 dB on average with an axial ratio <;3 dB is obtained in the entire operation bands. Lastly, the metrics of total scan pattern, coverage efficiency, and user shadowing are investigated. It is found that the proposed phased-array antenna has good 3D beam-steering characteristics, which makes it suitable for millimetre-wave 5G mobile applications.