Conformal Antenna Arrays for 3G Cellular Base Stations

Student: Vedran Azman

Supervisor: Marek Bialkowski

Category: Engineering Thesis Project - Communications

Mobile communication is the fastest growing industry in the world and it continues to grow at a rapid rate. Currently there are more than 1 billion cellular phone subscribers world wide. The new millennium has seen the introduction of next generation mobile communication systems (third generation 3G) that offer wide range of services such as video, multimedia and internet connection with much higher data rates than currently offered by the second generation systems. The new generation was developed to provide these new services as well as to increase the system capacity of current second generation networks that are increasingly finding it difficult to maintain the growing demand of cellular phone subscribers.

Third generation (3G) mobile communication systems have moved into a new spectral band (1.9 - 2.1 GHz) which means that future third generation base stations will need to be equipped with new types of antennas that will operate in this spectral band. This however imposes new challenge on base stations structures that have to deal with increasing number of antennas. Base station antennas for 3G communication system will need have multiband operation capability in order to cover both the 2G and 3G spectral bands. This is desired because it decreases the total number of antennas on a base station and it offers the interoperability between 2G and 3G systems in a single base station.

The aim of this thesis is to design an antenna array for 3G WCDMA cellular base station and study the effect of curvature on the performance of the array. The thesis investigates the properties of conformal antenna arrays that are prospective candidates for next generation mobile communication systems. Conformal denotes an antenna that is not planar and its surface conforms to any given shape. In this thesis cylindrical arrays are proposed due to their 360 degree field of view, radiation properties independent of azimuth pointing and smaller number of elements required than with an equivalent planar array. A cylindrical segment array of three elements is simulated for different curvature radii and element spacing. The effects of curvature and mutual coupling on the antenna radiation pattern are investigated and studied. Simulations are carried out using Agilent’s High Frequency Structure Simulator software (HFSS) which uses Finite Element Method (FEM) technique to produce a full wave analysis and take into account mutual coupling.

Thesis Document (PDF)

Poster Presentation (PDF)