Investigation on Beam Alignment of a Microstrip-Line Butler Matrix and an SIW Butler Matrix for 5G Beamforming Antennas through RF-to-RF Wireless Sensing and 64-QAM Tests

In this paper, an intuitive approach to assessing advantages of beamforming in 5G wireless communication is proposed as a novel try and practical demonstration of importance of alignment between the transmitter’s and receiver’s beams working in millimeter-wave frequency bands. Since the diffraction loss of millimeter-wave signals matters seriously in propagation, the effects of the misalignment and alignment between beams need to be checked for, which was conducted with a horn antenna and the 4 × 4 Butler matrix which mimic the relationship of the base station and handset antennas. Designing and using the microstrip-line and the substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) Butler matrices, RF-to-RF wireless connectivity between the horn and the microstrip line beamformer as case 1 and the horn and the SIW beamformer as case 2, concerning the changing angle of the beam from either of the two Butler matrices, was tested, showing over 12 dB enhancement in received power. This direct electromagnetic link test was accompanied by examining 64-QAM constellations for beam-angle changing from −30° to +30° for the two cases, where the error vector magnitude in the QAM-diagram becomes less than 10% by beam-alignment for the changing angle.

Dual-Band RF Wireless Power Transfer System with a Shared-Aperture Dual-Band Tx Array Antenna

In this paper, a dual-band RF wireless power transfer (WPT) system with a shared-aperture dual-band Tx array antenna for 2.4 and 5.8 GHz is proposed. The final configuration of the Tx array, which is made up of 2.4 GHz right-handed circular polarization (RHCP) patches and 5.8 GHz RHCP patches, is derived from the optimization of 2.4 and 5.8 GHz thinned arrays, ultimately to achieve high transmission efficiency for various WPT scenarios. The dual-band RF WPT Tx system including the Tx array antenna and a Tx module is implemented, and Rx antennas with a 2.4 GHz patch, a 5.8 GHz patch, and a dual-band (2.4 and 5.8 GHz) patch are developed. To validate the proposed dual-band RF WPT system, WPT experiments using a single band and dual bands were conducted. When transmitting RF wireless power on a single frequency (either 2.482 GHz or 5.73 GHz), the received power according to the distance between the Tx and Rx and the position of the Rx was measured. When the distance was varied from 1 m to 3.9 m and the transmitted power was 40 dBm, the received power value at 2.482 GHz and 5.73 GHz were measured and found to be 24.75–13.5 dBm (WPT efficiency = 2.985–0.224%) and 19.25–6.8 dBm (WPT efficiency = 0.841–0.050%), respectively. The measured results were in good agreement with the calculated results, and it is revealed that the transmission efficiency when wireless power is transmitted via beam-focusing increases more than that with conventional beam-forming. Furthermore, the dual-band WPT experiment proves that 2.482 GHz beam and 5.73 GHz beams can be formed individually and that their wireless power can be transmitted to a dual-band Rx or two different Rx.