Liquid Metal mm-Wave Phased Array Antenna for 5G Wireless Communication

This paper presents a mm-wave phased array antenna enabled by Liquid Metal technology. The proposed mm-wave phased array antenna operate on 26 GHz band and it is intended for 5G wireless applications. The proposed array consists of 1 × 4 array of printed dipole antennas with reconfigurable directors consisting of Liquid metal. The proposed array combines two different beam steering concepts to maximize the beam steering angle and the gain of the array with minimum number of elements; while keeping the side lobe level (SLL) performance low. These two concepts are reconfigurable one through using liquid metal directors rotation and electronic one through using phased shifters. The proposed array resonates at 26 GHz with a wide bandwidth performance and beam steering angle up ±40° in the end fire direction with gain performance exceeds 12.6 dBi.