Leti, a research institute of CEA Tech, and Radiall, a global manufacturer of interconnect solutions, created a five-year common lab to design innovative antennas to meet the infrastructure requirements of 5G networks and photonics components for harsh environments. They will develop low profile, millimeter-wave antenna solutions for backhaul/fronthaul applications.
5G networks require high-speed, point-to-point communication at millimeter-wave frequencies. The explosive increase in ultra-dense 5G infrastructure systems required to accommodate high-speed mobile data traffic and Internet of Things data is fueling a demand for low-cost, robust and reliable RF subsystems. These include compact and reconfigurable antennas that can be integrated on urban buildings and street furniture with minimal deployment cost.
At millimeter-wave frequencies between 30 and 300GHz, severe path loss must be compensated through high-gain antennas enabled by transmit-array designs. Leveraging its expertise in antenna design, CEA-Leti previously collaborated with Radiall on transmit-array technology development. This collaboration resulted in a V-band (57-66GHz) high-gain (32dBi) antenna delivering up to 20 Gb/s that Radiall added to its product line.
Multi-source transmit-array architecture is a promising solution to address this challenge because it minimizes the thickness of the antenna, while maintaining stability of the antenna gain over the entire bandwidth and controlling the sidelobe levels.