5G service has been available for several months now, but there are still no amplifiers that support the 5G frequencies. Currently, if you need to boost your 5G signal, you’ll need to do so with a lonely antenna.
Back in January we wrote about a plastics company that had been working on hardware to help pull in 5G signals. In similar news, a research team at Georgia Tech’s College of Engineering has developed a 3D printed tile that can boost the bandwidth of 5G cellular and IoT systems using multiple antennas.
By using this 3D printed tile-based approach, the unit scales to 256 antennas to construct on-demand, massively scalable arrays of 5G+ (5G/Beyond 5G) smart skins on nearly any surface or object. A single, flexible underlying layer holds the tiles and allows arrays to be attached to a multitude of surfaces. It provides very large 5G+ phased/electronically steerable antenna array networks.
The research team fabricated a proof-of-concept – it is a flexible 5×5-centimeter tile array that is wrapped around a 3.5-centimeter radius curvature. Each tile includes an antenna subarray and an integrated, beamforming integrated circuit on an underlying tiling layer to create a smart skin that can seamlessly interconnect the tiles into very large antenna arrays and massive multiple-input multiple-outputs (MIMOs).
The proposed modular tile approach means tiles of identical sizes can be manufactured in large quantities and are easily replaceable, reducing the cost of customization and repairs. Essentially, this approach combines removable elements, modularity, massive scalability, low cost, and flexibility into one system.
While the tiling architecture has demonstrated the ability to greatly enhance 5G+ technologies, its combination of flexible and conformal capabilities has the potential to be applied in numerous different environments, says the team.
“The shape and features of each tile scale can be singular and can accommodate different frequency bands and power levels,” said Prof Emmanouil (Manos) Tentzeris at Georgia Tech. “One could have communications capabilities, another sensing capabilities, and another could be an energy harvester tile for solar, thermal, or ambient RF energy. The application of the tile framework is not limited to communications.”
The team is also looking at how the tiles can be used in the Internet of Things and smart manufacturing/Industry 4.0.
“The tile-architecture’s mass scalability makes its applications particularly diverse and virtually ubiquitous. From structures the size of dams and buildings, to machinery or cars, down to individual health-monitoring wearables,” said Tentzeris. “We’re moving in a direction where everything will be covered in some type of a wireless conformal smart skin encompassing a communication system or antenna that allows for effective monitoring.” He added, “Typically, there are a lot of smaller wireless network systems working together, but they are not scalable. With the current techniques, you can’t increase, decrease, or direct bandwidth, especially for very large areas. Being able to utilize and scale this novel tile-based approach makes this possible.”
With the future in mind, the team is currently working on the fabrication of much larger, fully inkjet-printed tile arrays with 256+ elements that will be presented at the upcoming International Microwave Symposium (IEEE IMS 2022). The IMS presentation will introduce a new tile-based large-area architecture version that will allow assembly of customizable tile arrays in a rapid and low-cost fashion for numerous conformal platforms and 5G+ enabled applications.