Analysis of Performance Improvement of Planar Antenna Arrays with Optimized Square Rings for Massive MIMO Applications

Abstract

The power pattern of the conventional fully optimized planar arrays can be properly reshaped according to the required user-defined constraints. However, the practical implementation of such fully optimized large planar arrays is complex and expensive. This paper introduces a new and efficient technique that is capable of providing better performance and almost the same power pattern shapes as that of the conventional fully optimized planar arrays by optimally adjusting the element amplitude and phase excitations of the outer-square rings instead of all elements' excitations. The proposed technique starts with a massive fully planar array then divides it into two contiguous sub-planar arrays which are both symmetric about the original array center. The elements excitation amplitudes or phases of the outer sub-planar array are only adjusted to form the desired power pattern shapes, while the amplitudes or phases of the central sub-planar array elements which have usually higher weights than the outer elements are made constants (i.e., they made ones for the case of amplitude-only control and zeros for the phase-only control). The results demonstrate the capability of the proposed planar array to form the required power patterns with far less number of the adjustable elements.