Experimental results, presented for the first time at the International Union of Radio Science Atlantic / Asia-Pacific Radio Science Meeting, show the device can provide continuous ‘wide-angle’ beam steering, allowing it to track a moving mobile phone user in the same way that a satellite dish turns to track a moving object, but with significantly enhanced speeds.
University of Birmingham’s School of Engineering, the technology has demonstrated vast improvements in data transmission efficiency at frequencies ranging across the millimetre wave spectrum, where high efficiency is currently only achievable using slow, mechanically steered antenna solutions.
The device is fully compatible with existing 5G specifications that are currently used by mobile communications networks. Moreover, the new technology does not require the complex and inefficient feeding networks required for commonly deployed antenna systems, instead using a low complexity system which improves performance and is simple to fabricate.
The beam-steering antenna was developed by Dr James Churm, Dr Muhammad Rabbani, and Professor Alexandros Feresidis, Head of the Metamaterials Engineering Laboratory, as a solution for fixed, base station antenna, for which current technology shows reduced efficiency at higher frequencies, limiting the use of these frequencies for long-distance transmission.
The team is now developing and testing prototypes at higher frequencies and in applications that take it beyond 5G mobile communications.
University of Birmingham Enterprise has filed a patent application for this next generation beam-steering antenna technology, and is seeking industry partners for collaboration, product development or licensing.
The efficiency and other aspects of the underpinning technology have been subjected to the peer review process, published in respected journals, and presented at academic conferences1,2,3,4.
Metamaterials is the term used for materials that have been engineered to have special properties that are not found in naturally occurring materials. These properties can include the manipulation of electromagnetic waves by blocking, absorbing, enhancing, or bending waves.
