CMA1 – Innovative Hardware Solutions and Antenna Technologies for Advanced Wireless Communications in the Terahertz Regime
Tuesday, 4 June 2024, 16:00-17:30, room Gorilla 5
Session Chair: Eli De Poorter (Ghent University & Imec, BE)
Sub-THz Multi-Beam Antennas for Virtualized Terminal Technology
Yoshiki Sugimoto, Takeyuki Tsuchida, Takuya Sugiyama, Shumpei Kishi, Azuki Iwamoto, Kenta Nishimura Nishimura, Takanori Narita, Motko Sakamoto, Kunio Sakakibara and Nobuyoshi Kikuma (Nagoya Institute of Technology, Japan); Satoshi Ito (KDDI Research, Inc., Japan); Yoshio Kunisawa (KDDI Research Inc, Japan); Takahiro Hayashi (KDDI Research, Inc., Japan)
The next mobile communications, such as Beyond 5G and 6G, are focusing on the use of sub-terahertz bands. The sub-terahertz band has significant propagation loss, so a virtualized terminal technology suitable for using the sub-terahertz band has been proposed. We have developed several sub-terahertz band multi-beam antennas for virtualized terminals. This paper demonstrates the effectiveness of the developed dielectric lens multi-beam antenna and Rotman lens-fed multi-beam printed antenna. The plano-convex lens multi-beam antenna achieves eight beams with a pitch of approximately 7.5 degrees cover ±30 degrees with a gain higher than 22.8 dBi. The spherical lens multi-beam antenna has sixteen beams with a pitch of approximately 4 degrees cover ±30 degrees with a gain higher than 26.7dBi. Furthermore, the Rotman lens-fed multi-beam printed antenna achieves five-beam with a 12-degree pitch.
Building Hardware Accelerators for Environmental Awareness Using Ray-Tracing
Jintong An (TU Dortmund, Germany); Selma Saidi (TU Dortmund University, Germany); Ljiljana Simić (RWTH Aachen University, Germany)
Ray-tracing technique brings new solutions for robust beam management in 6G wireless communication. In this paper, a new reflection path derivation algorithm for ray-tracing of beams, i.e., iterative path convergence algorithm (IPC), is proposed. By decomposing the derivation of the entire ray path into mutually independent sub-problems associated with the respective planes involved in the reflection, the parallelization of the entire ray-tracing is realized, which significantly improves the convergence speed of the simulation; in addition, this paper also designs a module architecture that enables the IPC algorithm to be implemented on FPGAs, which fully utilizes the reconfigurability and parallelism of FPGAs to accelerate the convergence of the ray-tracing simulation. Finally, it has been validated that real-time ray-tracing can be achieved in milliseconds by the proposed FPGA-based IPC algorithm for a given pre-compiled dynamic environment.
Embedded Component Packaging for D-Band Radio Systems
Vladimir Ermolov (VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, Finland); Mario Schober (Advanced Technologies and Solutions, Austria); David del Río (CEIT and TECNUN, Spain); Alberto Chico (TTI Norte, Spain)
The paper presents an embedded component packaging platform for D-band radio systems. The operation of the integration platform was verified with a 4-channel SiGe transmitter MMIC designed for D band active antenna array. The embedded component packaging is highly reliable due to optimal protection of the embedded components and good heat dissipation. It increases the possible density of active and passive components. Key elements of the platform are tested. Miniaturization of the system allows keeping signal short and losses to a minimum. The testing shows promising results in terms of insertion loss, achieving~0.5 dB per transition, at 150 GHz. However, isolation of the RF lines feeding phased array chips should be improved in the next version of the platform.
Backscatter, Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces and MIMO Communications with a Multipurpose Antenna Array
Abdelwaheb Ourir (Institut Langevin ESPCI Paris CNRS, France); Dinh-Thuy Phan-Huy (Orange, France); Philippe Ratajczak (Orange Innovation, France); Julien de Rosny (CNRS, ESPCI Paris, PSL Research University, France)
Multiple input multiple output (MIMO) systems have exploited multiple antenna arrays to boost the performance of wireless communications. However, they rely on energy-greedy arrays of transmit and receive radio-frequency (RF) chains. Recent advancements in low-power communications have introduced two novel approaches, avoiding the use of RF transmit chains. The first one consists in using electronically tunable mirrors called Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RIS) to improve the wireless propagation channel between a transmitter and a receiver, instead of using active repeaters with transmit RF chains. The second one consists in backscattering ambient waves and modulating the propagation channel to implement ultra-low power communication, instead of transmitting with an RF chain. While a MIMO device is obviously made up of an antenna array, this can also be the case for RIS and backscattering ones when connected to reconfigurable loads. To exploit this synergy, we propose a Multipurpose Antenna Array (MAA) capable of managing all three operating modes. In this paper, we present a model of the MAA based on S-matrix analysis, which highlights the link between the 3 modes. It also allows a fast but accurate simulation of MAA. Furthermore, we have build and successfully tested the three modes over a first real-time prototype made of 8 patch antennas operating at 3.7 GHz.
