Time-Modulated Antenna Arrays for Ultra-Wideband 5G Applications

Abstract

This research presents the design of time-modulated antenna arrays with UWB performance. The antenna arrays consider a linear topology with eight UWB disk-notch patch antennas. The technological problem is to find out the optimum antenna positions and/or time sequences to reduce the side lobes and the sidebands in all of the UWB frequency ranges. The design process is formulated as a bacterial foraging optimization. The results show that the uniform array generates a better SLL performance whereas the non-uniform array obtains a wider bandwidth. The uniform array obtains an SLL < −20 dB from 3.37 GHz to 4.8 GHz and the non-uniform array generates an SLL < −7 dB from 2.97 GHz to 5.26 GHz. The sideband levels are very similar for both cases with a value of around −17 dB.