Patent Application
20240266757
The field of the invention is RF frequency antenna and lenses.
The background description includes information that may be useful in understanding the present invention. It is not an admission that any of the information provided herein is prior art or relevant to the presently claimed invention, or that any publication specifically or implicitly referenced is prior art.
When selecting antennas for wireless coverage at large gatherings of people at stadiums and venues—outdoor and indoor—it is desirable to create a rectangular pattern coverage where the pattern is near maximum over a rectangular footprint and minimum outside that rectangular footprint.
The inventive subject matter provides apparatus, systems, and methods in which a communication system includes an array of RF elements that transit and/or receive signals through a lens, and a power divider is configured to provide unequal amplitude and/or phase to at least some of the RF elements. The shape and direction of the resulting beam is controlled in part by the shape of the array, the relative power distributed to the different RF elements, the operating frequency, the shape of the lens, the position of the lens with respect to the array, and the distance of the lens from the array.
Contemplated arrays include at least 3 elements along a first axis and at least 3 elements along a different, second axis. Some contemplated embodiments include at least three elements along a third axis different from the first and second axes.
In some embodiments the power divider is configured to cooperate with the RF elements of an array to concurrently provide different weightings to different beams.
In some embodiments a rectangular beam pattern is formed by feeding the RF lens with a planar array of elements. This allows for a wider beam than produced from a single feed or pair of feeds, and results in a square shaped radiation pattern compared to the more common round pattern when viewed in three dimensions.
In some embodiments a planar array of elements fed with a set of amplitude and phase weights can produce a narrow far-field pattern at a large number of wavelengths from the array. Closer to the array surface, on the order of one wavelength, the wavefront is very broad and follows the square nature of the array. The RF lens transforms this large, wide, square illuminating pattern into a wider beam square shaped pattern. Accordingly, the RF lens is used to transform each feed to a higher gain pattern, directed in a direction consistent with the array geometry, that when combined with a proper weight set produce a highly square shaped pattern.
For indoor and outdoor venues, it is desirable to use antennas with square or rectangular radiation patterns to conform to typical seating which is organized in square and rectangular shapes. Using this type of antenna to cover several sectors, one antenna per sector, is contemplated to improve network performance since there are smaller “holes” in the coverage compared to traditional round patterns found with simple low gain antennas. The ideal pattern has constant power over a square or rectangular shape and rapidly falls off outside the desired coverage area. Using a square or rectangular array of feeds—either on a common ground plane or individual ground planes—can provide this style of pattern.
Various objects, features, aspects, and advantages of the inventive subject matter will become more apparent from the following detailed description of preferred embodiments, along with the accompanying drawing figures in which like numerals represent like components.
The following discussion provides example embodiments of the inventive subject matter. Although each embodiment represents a single combination of inventive elements, the inventive subject matter is considered to include all possible combinations of the disclosed elements. Thus, if one embodiment comprises elements A, B, and C, and a second embodiment comprises elements B and D, then the inventive subject matter is also considered to include other remaining combinations of A, B, C, or D, even if not explicitly disclosed.
It is contemplated for arrays to have dual polarization, to provide for a minimum of 2×2 MIMO (multiple input multiple output). 4×4 MIMO can be achieved using a pair of antennas.
Each element of the 3×3 array shown in
In
In this example, a first set of RF elements 211, 212, 213 is aligned along a virtual horizontal axis 252. Each of a second set of RF elements 221, 222, 223 and a third set of RF elements 231, 232, 233 is also aligned along horizontal axis 252. Each of a fourth set of RF elements 211, 221, 231, a fifth set of RF elements 212, 222, 232, and a sixth set of RF elements 213, 223, 233 are aligned along a virtual vertical axis 254 in a three-dimensional space. Smaller and larger arrays, for example a 2×2 array (not shown), a 4×4 array (not shown) and a 5×5 array (not shown), could each be similarly aligned.
The box RF element 240 is termed a “box” dipole due to the dipole arms arranged in a square of box configuration.
In
Each of the two cases shown in
In each of the embodiments of
It should be appreciated that alternative arrays of RF elements could have any practical number of N rows by M columns, where N and M can be any practical integer greater than one. Thus, in linear arrays (not shown) where N is 1, M can be 2, 3, 4, etc.
The examples shown here use a spherical RF lens 150 but the approach can be used with any type of RF lens, this could include truncated spherical lens, lenses of any number of layers and dielectric constants, lenses of other shapes including cylindrical, elliptical, and lenses based on transforming common shapes like spherical and cylindrical to provide more compact geometries.
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 63444186 | Feb 2023 | US |
