The present invention relates to the technical field of communication, in particular to an array antenna apparatus and a preparation method therefor, and an electronic device using the array antenna apparatus for communication.
With the development of modern wireless communication technology, antennas play a very important role in mobile communication devices. With the advent of the fifth-generation mobile communication technology era (5G era), in order to meet the high-rate information transmission requirements of the 5G era, therefore, it is necessary to form an array antenna with multiple antenna elements to increase its gain, and to achieve an increase in information transmission capacity through multiple antennas. However, in the prior art, as an array antenna applied to terminal equipment and base stations, a single and fixed antenna array structure is usually adopted, and there will be sidelobe levels during operation, which will cause the signal-to-noise ratio of the signal to decrease. The single and fixed antenna array structure makes the antenna working frequency bandwidth limited and the beam direction is single, which limits the working accuracy, working band and working range of the antenna. Therefore, in the development of antennas, the development of an antenna with the advantages of low sidelobes, large bandwidth and multiple beams is particularly important in the technical field of communication, and it is also particularly necessary to meet the communication needs of the 5G era.
The embodiment of the present invention provides an array antenna apparatus and a preparation method therefor, and an electronic device, which overcomes the technical problems of fixed beam, narrow beam width, and limited bandwidth in the traditional planar antenna array method while ensuring resolution, it also has the advantages of low sidelobes, large bandwidth, and multiple beams.
In one aspect, in order to achieve the above advantages, the present invention provides an array antenna apparatus, including:
Preferably, all the array elements of the first antenna are symmetrically distributed about a geometric center of the first substrate, and all the array elements of the second antenna are symmetrically distributed about a geometric center of the second substrate, projections of the geometric center of the first substrate and the geometric center of the second substrate on the second substrate coincide;
Preferably, the size of each array element of the first antenna is different from the size of each array element of the second antenna.
Preferably, all the array elements of the first antenna are not symmetrically distributed about the geometric center of the first substrate, all the array elements of the second antenna are not symmetrically distributed about the geometric center of the second substrate, the projections of the geometric center of the first substrate and the geometric center of the second substrate on the second substrate coincide.
Preferably, spacings between any two adjacent array elements, in a second direction perpendicular to a first direction which is from top to bottom, of the array elements of each row of the first antenna are unequal, and spacings between any two adjacent array elements in the second direction of the array elements of each row of the second antenna are unequal.
Preferably, the sizes of all the array elements of the first antenna are the same, the sizes of all the array elements of the second antenna are the same, and the sizes of the array elements of the first antenna are different from the sizes of the array elements of the second antenna.
Preferably, the spacing between two adjacent array elements in the transverse and/or longitudinal direction of the first substrate among all the array elements of the first antenna gradually increases as a distance from the geometric center of the first substrate increases,
Preferably, the spacing between two adjacent array elements in the transverse and/or longitudinal direction of the first substrate among all the array elements of the first antenna gradually decreases as the distance from the geometric center of the first substrate increases, the spacing between two adjacent array elements in the transverse and longitudinal direction of the second substrate among all the array elements of the second antenna gradually increases or decreases as the distance from the geometric center of the first substrate increases.
Preferably, the width of each array element of the first antenna gradually increases or decreases as the distance from the geometric center of the first substrate increases, the width of each element of the second antenna gradually increases or decreases as the distance from the geometric center of the second substrate increases, and the length of each element of the first antenna is a first preset value, and the length of each element of the second antenna is a second preset value different from the first preset value.
Preferably, the distance between the geometric centers of any two adjacent array elements of the first antenna is a first specified value; the distance between the geometric centers of any two adjacent array elements of the second antenna is a second specified value different from the first specified value.
In another aspect, the embodiment of the present invention further provides a preparation method of array antenna, comprising:
In another aspect, the embodiments of the present invention further provide an electronic device, which includes the array antenna apparatus described in any one of the preceding aspects.
Preferably, the electronic device is at least one of a mobile communication device, a radar device, a satellite communication device, or an automobile.
The array antenna apparatus, the preparation method therefore, and the electronic device of the present invention have the following beneficial effects:
In order to make the objectives, technical solutions, and advantages of the embodiments of the present invention clearer, the technical solutions in the embodiments of the present invention will be described clearly and completely in conjunction with the accompanying drawings in the embodiments of the present invention. It should be noted that, in this specification, terms like “first” and “second” are only used for descriptive purposes, and cannot be understood as indicating or implying their relative importance or implicitly indicating the number of indicated technical features. In the description of the present invention, it should be understood that the orientation or positional relationship indicated by the terms of “center”, “upper”, “lower”, “front”, “rear”, “left”, “right”, “vertical”, “horizontal” “top”, “bottom”, “inner”, “outer”, etc. are based on the orientation or positional relationship shown in the drawings, which is only for the convenience of describing the application and simplifying the description, rather than indicating or implying that the device or element referred to must have a specific orientation, be configured and operated in a specific orientation, and therefore cannot be understood as a limitation of the present invention. Moreover, the terms “comprise”, “include” or any other variations thereof are intended to cover non-exclusive inclusion, so that a process, method, article or device including a series of elements not only includes those elements, but also includes other elements that are not explicitly listed, or elements inherent to the process, method, article, or equipment. If there are no more restrictions, the element defined by the sentence “including . . . ” does not exclude the existence of other same elements in the process, method, article or equipment that includes the element. If there is no conflict, the embodiments of the present invention and various features in the embodiments can be combined with each other, and all fall within the protection scope of the present invention.
Referring to
Wherein the projections of all the array elements of the first antenna 110 and all the array elements of the second antenna 210 on the second substrate 200 do not completely coincide. The incomplete coincidence here means that the size of the array element of the first antenna is different from the size of the array element of the second antenna. Or the projections of the array element of the first antenna and the array element of the second antenna on the second substrate do not coincide or partially coincide.
In addition, the size of the first substrate and the size of the second substrate are preferably the same, of course, they may be different. It should be noted that the size (size of array element, size of substrate) mentioned herein refers to the length (usually called the antenna length) on the Y-axis and the width (usually called the antenna width) on the X-axis when the device is represented by a two-dimensional plane coordinate axis without calculating the thickness of the device, the thickness of the device is the height difference between the upper surface and the lower surface of the device in the top-down direction in the present invention, namely the vertical direction.
Here, the first antenna and the second antenna may be only transmitting antennas or receiving antennas, or each may include a transmitting antenna and a receiving antenna, respectively. For example, when the first antenna or the second antenna includes a transmitting antenna and a receiving antenna at the same time, the receiving antenna and the transmitting antenna on the same substrate are connected to each other through metal wire vias. As shown in
In a preferred embodiment, the array elements on the same substrate are connected by connecting lines, and the array elements are arranged symmetrically on both sides of the connecting line (as shown in
In addition, the number of substrates and the number of antennas provided on the substrate can be set to n, n is greater than or equal to 2, in this way, multiple beams can be realized, and the projections between the array elements of each layer and the array elements of other layers on the designated surface of any substrate do not completely coincide, such as staggered arrangement or partial coincidence. In this way, it is possible to realize that the main lobes of the array elements of each layer point to different directions, and the angle of each main lobe can be adjusted through the incomplete coincidence of the array elements, so as to realize a large bandwidth, and it is also possible to cancel the horizontal sidelobe levels generated by the array antennas on each substrate.
The positions of two or more layers of antenna array elements are evenly overlapped but not completely overlapped, and the sizes of the array elements (microstrip patches) are different, and multi-channel or large-bandwidth transmission can be realized in the same transmitting/receiving direction.
The length of any element of the first antenna or the second antenna is approximately equal to 0.5 times the medium wavelength λ. Usually millimeter waves are used, so the size of the antenna can be small, preferably between 0.3λ and 1.2λ.
In
V is the longitudinal spacing of the array element (microstrip patch), the number 1 refers to the first layer antenna, and the letter n refers to the nth layer antenna. VI is the longitudinal spacing between the microstrip patches of the first layer antenna, and Vn is the longitudinal spacing between the microstrip patches of the nth layer antenna; the size of VI is also different from the size of Vn.
L is the width of the array element (microstrip patch), the number 1 refers to the first layer antenna, and the letter n refers to the nth layer antenna. L1 is the width of the microstrip patch of the first layer antenna, and Ln is the width of the microstrip patch of the nth layer antenna. The size of L1 is also different from the size of Ln.
After arranging according to the antenna structure disclosed in the present invention, the antenna bandwidth is increased and multi-beam is realized, and it can effectively adjust and suppress antenna side lobes, effectively reduce mutual coupling and interference between antennas, and improve communication quality and radar detection efficiency.
The array antenna apparatus according to the first embodiment of the present invention adopts an up-down design in a three-dimensional space, and the array elements of the array antenna on each substrate layer and the array elements of the array antenna on the other substrate layers are designed to be differentiated in the array element layout position and the spacing between adjacent array elements, which not only overcomes the technical prejudice in the prior art, namely the prejudice of designing upper and lower layers in three-dimensional space, but also can effectively achieve the following beneficial effects:
Referring to
In a specific embodiment, the size of each array element of the first antenna is different from the size of each array element of the second antenna.
Specifically, all the array elements of the first antenna 110 on the first substrate 100 have the same size, and the spacings between any two adjacent array elements are equal, which are arranged in a center-symmetrical arrangement. All the array elements of the second antenna 210 on the second substrate 200 have the same size, and the spacings between any two adjacent array elements are equal, and the center is symmetrically arranged. The projection of the geometric center of the first substrate and the geometric center of the second substrate on the second substrate completely coincides.
The length of each array element (microstrip patch) of the first antenna is different from the length of each array element (microstrip patch) of the second antenna, therefore each generates an outgoing wave of different frequencies to form multiple frequency bands or to be superimposed on each other in the frequency domain to achieve the effect of increasing the bandwidth.
Referring to
The spacings between any two adjacent array elements, in a second direction perpendicular to a first direction which is from top to bottom, of each row of the first antenna are unequal, for example, the spacing between the array element 112 and the array element 113 is not equal to the spacing between the array element 113 and the array element 114. The spacings between any two adjacent array elements in the second direction of each row of the second antenna are unequal, for example, the spacing between the array element 211 and the array element 212 is not equal to the spacing between the array element 212 and the array element 213.
In this embodiment, the array element of the array antenna on a certain substrate layer is not evenly spaced or the array elements are arranged asymmetrically, which can change the beam angle and main beam direction of the main beam of the antenna on this layer, at the same time, under this circumstance that the positions of the array elements of the antenna of each substrate layer are unevenly or asymmetrically distributed, the projections of the elements of the array elements of the antenna of other layers on any designated layer do not completely coincide, which allows each layer to produce its own electromagnetic field phase changes, and generate multiple outgoing beams. When these multi-layer antenna arrays are superimposed, a multi-beam antenna can be realized.
Referring to
In a specific embodiment, the spacing between two adjacent array elements in the transverse and/or longitudinal direction of the first substrate among all the array elements 11A, 11B, 11C, 11D, 11E, 11F, 11G, 11H of the first antenna gradually increases as the distance from the geometric center of the first substrate increases, the spacing between two adjacent array elements in the transverse and/or longitudinal direction of the second substrate among all the array elements 21A, 21B, 21C, 21D, 21E, 21F, 21G, 21H of the second antenna gradually increases or gradually increases as the distance from the geometric center of the second substrate increases.
In a specific embodiment, the spacing between two adjacent array elements in the transverse and/or longitudinal direction of the first substrate among all the array elements of the first antenna gradually decreases as the distance from the geometric center of the first substrate increases, the spacing between two adjacent elements in the transverse and longitudinal directions of the second substrate among all elements of the second antenna gradually increases or decreases as the distance from the geometric center of the second substrate increases.
Referring to
Further, the width of each array element 11a, 11b, 11c, 11d, 11e, 11f, 11g, 11h of the first antenna gradually increases or decreases as the distance from the geometric center of the first substrate increases, the width of each array element 21a, 21b, 21c, 21d, 21e, 21f, 21g, 21h of the second antenna gradually increases or decreases as the distance from the geometric center of the second substrate increases, and the length of each array element of the first antenna is a first preset value, and the length of each array element of the second antenna is a second preset value different from the first preset value.
In a specific embodiment, the distance between the geometric centers of any two adjacent array elements of the first antenna is a first specified value; the distance between the geometric centers of any two adjacent array elements of the second antenna is a second specified value different from the first specified value. In other words, the distance between the geometric centers of any adjacent array element of the first antenna remains unchanged, but the size of the array element is changed, and the same is true for any adjacent element of the second antenna.
Referring to
Referring to
It should be clear that the present invention is not limited to the specific configuration and processing described above and shown in the drawings. For the sake of brevity, a detailed description of the known method is omitted here. In the above embodiments, several specific steps are described and shown as examples. However, the method process of the present invention is not limited to the specific steps described and shown, and those skilled in the art can make various changes, modifications and additions, or change the order between the steps after understanding the spirit of the present invention. These should be covered within the protection scope of the present invention.
| Number | Date | Country | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| 202010077702.5 | Jan 2020 | CN | national |
| Number | Name | Date | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| 11637362 | Kim | Apr 2023 | B2 |
| 20030137456 | Sreenivas | Jul 2003 | A1 |
| 20100171675 | Borja | Jul 2010 | A1 |
| 20150236425 | Sudo | Aug 2015 | A1 |
| 20180090852 | Dufilie | Mar 2018 | A1 |
| Number | Date | Country |
|---|---|---|
| 1658433 | Aug 2005 | CN |
| 103646144 | Mar 2014 | CN |
| 104769775 | Jul 2015 | CN |
| 109962334 | Jul 2019 | CN |
| 210957007 | Jul 2020 | CN |
| Entry |
|---|
| International Search Report of PCT Patent Application No. PCT/CN2021/073822 issued on Mar. 30, 2021. |
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 20220416443 A1 | Dec 2022 | US |
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Parent | PCT/CN2021/073822 | Jan 2021 | WO |
| Child | 17901856 | US |