Patent Application
20200395665
The present disclosure relates to antenna arrays for communication and/or imaging applications.
This section introduces aspects that may help facilitate a better understanding of the disclosure. Accordingly, the statements of this section are to be read in this light and are not to be understood as admissions about what is prior art or what is not prior art.
It is known to use arrays of antenna elements for communication and imaging applications. In communication applications, new generations of mobile technology typically involve higher data rates that must be supported by the hardware for that mobile technology, including the antennas used to transmit and receive the associated wireless communication signals.
In one embodiment, the present disclosure is an antenna block comprising a substrate, one or more instances of a first type of dual-band, dual-polarization patch antenna formed on the substrate, one or more instances of a second type of dual-band, dual-polarization patch antenna formed on the substrate, a first feed line formed on the substrate, and a different, second feed line formed on the substrate. The first type of patch antenna is configured to support a first frequency band in a first polarization direction and a first frequency band in a second polarization direction, wherein the first frequency band in the first polarization direction is different from the first frequency band in the second polarization direction. The second type of patch antenna is configured to support a second frequency band in the first polarization direction and a second frequency band in the second polarization direction, wherein (i) the second frequency band in the second polarization direction is different from the second frequency band in the first polarization direction and (ii) the second frequency band in the first polarization direction is different from the first frequency band in the first polarization direction. The first feed line is connected to support the first frequency band in the first polarization direction, and the second feed line is connected to support the second frequency band in the first polarization direction.
Embodiments of the disclosure will become more fully apparent from the following detailed description, the appended claims, and the accompanying drawings in which like reference numerals identify similar or identical elements.
As used herein, the term “X-ray” implies that the corresponding figure shows features that would not all be visible from an exterior view or a single cross-sectional view.
Detailed illustrative embodiments of the present disclosure are disclosed herein. However, specific structural and functional details disclosed herein are merely representative for purposes of describing example embodiments of the present disclosure. The present disclosure may be embodied in many alternate forms and should not be construed as limited to only the embodiments set forth herein. Further, the terminology used herein is for the purpose of describing particular embodiments only and is not intended to be limiting of example embodiments of the disclosure.
As used herein, the singular forms “a,” “an,” and “the,” are intended to include the plural forms as well, unless the context clearly indicates otherwise. It further will be understood that the terms “comprises,” “comprising,” “includes,” and/or “including,” specify the presence of stated features, steps, or components, but do not preclude the presence or addition of one or more other features, steps, or components. It also should be noted that in some alternative implementations, the functions/acts noted may occur out of the order noted in the figures. For example, two figures shown in succession may in fact be executed substantially concurrently or may sometimes be executed in the reverse order, depending upon the functions/acts involved.
Thus, in the antenna block 100:
As understood by those skilled in the art, the length and width dimensions of the structure used to form each patch antenna 102 determine the two frequency bands at which a dual-band, dual-polarization patch antenna 102 is designed to operate, where larger dimensions imply lower frequencies. In the context of
As understood by those skilled in the art, the antenna block 100 has feed lines (not shown in
In some implementations, the antenna block 100 is implemented as a printed circuit board (PCB) device on a PCB substrate, where one or more integrated circuit (IC) chips that provide the electronic circuitry to support the operations of the antenna block are mounted onto the bottom of the PCB. In other implementations, the antenna block 100 may be implemented using any other suitable substrate, including (without limitation) glass or semiconductor. Note that, when the antenna block 100 is implemented on a semiconductor substrate as an integrated device, the electronic circuitry that supports the operations of that antenna block may be implemented on that same semiconductor substrate, thereby forming a single system-on-chip (SoC) device.
When the antenna block 100 of
Note that, in some implementations, a given IC chip may support two or more different frequency bands.
Those skilled in the art will understand that (i) two instances of the second type of IC chip are deployed with the first type of IC chip mounted between them and (ii) all three IC chips 200(1)-(3) are mounted at 45-degree angles relative to the first and second polarization directions in order to reduce the overall length and simplify the topology of the feed lines needed to route the electronic signals to and from the sixteen different patch antennas 102. Those skilled in the art will understand that the IC chips 200(1)-(3) can be mounted at angles other than 45 degrees, including 0 degrees.
In addition to the length and width dimensions of the individual patch antennas 102, another important feature of the antenna block 100 of
For the four particular frequencies supported by the antenna block 100 of
Note that, while the inter-patch distance A for the patch antennas 102(1) of the first type would be relatively far from ideal in such an implementation of the antenna block 100, some of the sub-optimal beamforming in the first frequency band in the first polarization direction resulting from that sub-optimal inter-patch distance would be compensated for by the fact that there are twice as many patch antennas 102(1) of the first type as there are of each of the other two types. As used herein, the term “inter-patch distance” refers to the distance between the centers of two different patches.
Based on the above-described features, which promote the suppression of inter-band interference, the antenna block 100 of
The antenna block 100 of
Although the (4×4) antenna block 100 of
Although the (4×4) antenna block 100 of
Note that a (4×4) antenna array equivalent to the antenna block 100 could then be provided by configuring four instances of such a (2×2) antenna block as tiles in a (2×2) arrangement and that an (8×8) antenna array equivalent to the antenna array 300 of
Note that
Although the three different types of patch antennas 102 of
Although the four different frequencies supported by the antenna block 100 of
Although the antenna block 100 of
Although antenna blocks have been described having square arrangements of patch antennas, in alternative embodiments, antenna blocks may have non-square rectangular arrangements of patch antennas. For example, any two adjacent rows of patch antennas 102 in
According to certain embodiments, an article of manufacture comprises an antenna block comprising a substrate; one or more instances of a first type of dual-band, dual-polarization patch antenna formed on the substrate, wherein the first type of patch antenna is configured to support a first frequency band in a first polarization direction and a first frequency band in a second polarization direction, wherein the first frequency band in the first polarization direction is different from the first frequency band in the second polarization direction; one or more instances of a second type of dual-band, dual-polarization patch antenna formed on the substrate, wherein the second type of patch antenna is configured to support a second frequency band in the first polarization direction and a second frequency band in the second polarization direction, wherein (i) the second frequency band in the second polarization direction is different from the second frequency band in the first polarization direction and (ii) the second frequency band in the first polarization direction is different from the first frequency band in the first polarization direction; a first feed line formed on the substrate and connected to support the first frequency band in the first polarization direction; and a different, second feed line formed on the substrate and connected to support the second frequency band in the first polarization direction.
According to certain embodiments of the foregoing, the first and second frequency bands in the second polarization direction are equal to a common frequency band in the second polarization direction; and the antenna block further comprises a different, third feed line formed on the substrate and connected to support the common frequency band in the second polarization direction.
According to certain embodiments of the foregoing, the antenna block further comprises one or more instances of a third type of dual-band, dual-polarization patch antenna formed on the substrate, wherein the third type of patch antenna is configured to support a third frequency band in the first polarization direction and a third frequency band in the second polarization direction, wherein (i) the third frequency band in the second polarization direction is different from the third frequency band in the first polarization direction and (ii) the third frequency band in the first polarization direction is different from the first and second frequency bands in the first polarization direction; and a different, third feed line formed on the substrate and connected to support the third frequency band in the first polarization direction.
According to certain embodiments of the foregoing, the first, second, and third frequency bands in the second polarization direction are equal to a common frequency band in the second polarization direction; and the antenna block further comprises a different, fourth feed line formed on the substrate and connected to support the common frequency band in the second polarization direction.
According to certain embodiments of the foregoing, the antenna block comprises a (2×2) arrangement of patch antennas comprising two instances of the first type of patch antenna located at opposing corners of the (2×2) arrangement; one instance of the second type of patch antenna; and one instance of the third type of patch antenna.
According to certain embodiments of the foregoing, the antenna block comprises a (4×4) arrangement of patch antennas comprising eight instances of the first type of patch antenna; four instances of the second type of patch antenna; and four instances of the third type of patch antenna.
According to certain embodiments of the foregoing, the article further comprises one instance of a first type of integrated circuit (IC) chip configured to support operations of the antenna block in the second and third frequency bands in the first polarization direction; and two instances of a second type of IC chip configured to support operations of the antenna block in the first frequency band in the first polarization direction and in the common frequency band in the second polarization direction.
According to certain embodiments of the foregoing, each of the three IC chips is mounted onto the antenna block at a non-zero-degree angle relative to rows and columns of the patch antennas in the antenna block.
According to certain embodiments of the foregoing, the article comprises a multi-band antenna array comprising a plurality of instances of the antenna block arranged in a two-dimensional pattern.
According to certain embodiments of the foregoing, the multi-band antenna array comprises a first antenna block and a second antenna block arranged side-by-side, wherein inter-patch distances are substantially identical (i) between adjacent patch antennas within each antenna block and (ii) between adjacent patch antennas between the first antenna block and the second antenna block.
According to certain embodiments of the foregoing, the antenna block has a rectangular peripheral edge; the center points of the patch antennas in the antenna block form a two-dimensional grid having an outer rectangle of center points; and the shortest distance from each center point in the outer rectangle to the peripheral edge of the antenna block is one half of the distance between adjacent center points in the two-dimensional grid.
According to certain embodiments of the foregoing, the substrate is a printed circuit board (PCB) substrate; and one or more integrated circuit (IC) chips are mounted onto the PCB substrate and configured to support operations of the antenna block.
For purposes of this description, the terms “couple,” “coupling,” “coupled,” “connect,” “connecting,” or “connected” refer to any manner known in the art or later developed in which energy is allowed to be transferred between two or more elements, and the interposition of one or more additional elements is contemplated, although not required. Conversely, the terms “directly coupled,” “directly connected,” etc., imply the absence of such additional elements.
Signals and corresponding terminals, nodes, ports, or paths may be referred to by the same name and are interchangeable for purposes here.
Unless explicitly stated otherwise, each numerical value and range should be interpreted as being approximate as if the word “about” or “approximately” preceded the value or range.
It will be further understood that various changes in the details, materials, and arrangements of the parts which have been described and illustrated in order to explain embodiments of this disclosure may be made by those skilled in the art without departing from embodiments of the disclosure encompassed by the following claims.
In this specification including any claims, the term “each” may be used to refer to one or more specified characteristics of a plurality of previously recited elements or steps. When used with the open-ended term “comprising,” the recitation of the term “each” does not exclude additional, unrecited elements or steps. Thus, it will be understood that an apparatus may have additional, unrecited elements and a method may have additional, unrecited steps, where the additional, unrecited elements or steps do not have the one or more specified characteristics.
The use of figure numbers and/or figure reference labels in the claims is intended to identify one or more possible embodiments of the claimed subject matter in order to facilitate the interpretation of the claims. Such use is not to be construed as necessarily limiting the scope of those claims to the embodiments shown in the corresponding figures.
Reference herein to “one embodiment” or “an embodiment” means that a particular feature, structure, or characteristic described in connection with the embodiment can be included in at least one embodiment of the disclosure. The appearances of the phrase “in one embodiment” in various places in the specification are not necessarily all referring to the same embodiment, nor are separate or alternative embodiments necessarily mutually exclusive of other embodiments. The same applies to the term “implementation.”
The embodiments covered by the claims in this application are limited to embodiments that (1) are enabled by this specification and (2) correspond to statutory subject matter. Non-enabled embodiments and embodiments that correspond to non-statutory subject matter are explicitly disclaimed even if they fall within the scope of the claims.
As used in this application, the term “circuitry” may refer to one or more or all of the following: (a) hardware-only circuit implementations (such as implementations in only analog and/or digital circuitry); (b) combinations of hardware circuits and software, such as (as applicable): (i) a combination of analog and/or digital hardware circuit(s) with software/firmware and (ii) any portions of hardware processor(s) with software (including digital signal processor(s)), software, and memory(ies) that work together to cause an apparatus, such as a mobile phone or server, to perform various functions); and (c) hardware circuit(s) and or processor(s), such as a microprocessor(s) or a portion of a microprocessor(s), that requires software (e.g., firmware) for operation, but the software may not be present when it is not needed for operation.” This definition of circuitry applies to all uses of this term in this application, including in any claims. As a further example, as used in this application, the term circuitry also covers an implementation of merely a hardware circuit or processor (or multiple processors) or portion of a hardware circuit or processor and its (or their) accompanying software and/or firmware. The term circuitry also covers, for example and if applicable to the particular claim element, a baseband integrated circuit or processor integrated circuit for a mobile device or a similar integrated circuit in server, a cellular network device, or other computing or network device.
Unless otherwise specified herein, the use of the ordinal adjectives “first,” “second,” “third,” etc., to refer to an object of a plurality of like objects merely indicates that different instances of such like objects are being referred to, and is not intended to imply that the like objects so referred-to have to be in a corresponding order or sequence, either temporally, spatially, in ranking, or in any other manner.
