28GHz Active Phased Array Antenna Employing GaAs Frontend Module for Massive MIMO in 5G

In 5G mobile communication systems, superb performances, namely large system capacity, low latency and massive connection are expected. A massive multiple input multiple output (MIMO)antenna has attracted a great attraction to become a key technology to meet such 5G requirements. In this paper, we report development results of an active phased array antenna (APAA)employing a highly integrated GaAs RF frontend module at 28 GHz-band. The transmission trial of 16-beam spatial-multiplexing using the APAA with 256 antenna elements is also reported. A spectral efficiency of 63.7 bps/Hz and a downlink transmission rate of 25.5 Gbps were successfully achieved.