An antenna array with dual-functionality - electromagnetic radiation and thermal cooling - is proposed. An iterative array design procedure is developed to improve cooling, mutual coupling, side lobe levels, and gain levels in dual-functional antenna arrays with adaptive beam steering. Heatsink-attached patch elements are combined with complementary split ring resonator (CSRR) structures in between the elements, resulting in a novel modular heatsink antenna array. Based on the proposed design, the beam scanning performances of four-element and eight-element linear arrays at 26 GHz are studied. A conventional shorted patch antenna array is used for benchmarking. Through thermal and electromagnetic simulations, it is demonstrated that the proposed antenna array decreases the maximal array temperature by more than 40°C as compared to the benchmark. Moreover, the new design resolves the pattern performance degradation problems in heatsink arrays, while approaching to the electromagnetic performance of the benchmarked array.

A novel system design framework is proposed for hybrid beamforming receivers to reduce the power consumption withoutany loss in sensitivity or beam scanning performance. Only the amplitude taper that corresponds to the relative individual analog subarrays is applied in the analog beamforming domain, while the rest of the taper is applied using digital beamformingcoefficients. Based on a given array size, number of beams, and the desired sidelobe suppression level, the number of analog subarrays and the beamforming integrated circuit (BFIC) component characteristics are optimally selected. An improved BFIC module is recommended that has less analog pre-amplification and a smaller dynamic range of variable attenuator steps. For concept demonstration, a benchmark analog beamforming and hybrid beamforming SatCom architecture, without this improvement, are simulated using a joint signal and power consumption analysis. For a 32 × 32 element array with 2 simultaneous beams and 30 dB side lobe tapering, the analog benchmark and hybrid benchmark (with 64 subarrays) are simulated to have a power consumption of 50.1 W and 66.5 W, respectively, A similar hybrid beamforming architecture with modified BFIC modules is shown to have a total power consumption of 40.3 W, less than both benchmarks. Furthermore, a comprehensive analysis of the system is conducted to illustrate how power consumption is influenced by the chosen number of subarrays with respect to the targeted sidelobe suppression, array size, number of beams and number of ADC bits.

The throughput performance of intelligently shaped and fixed analog elevation beam patterns in millimeter-wave (mm-wave) base stations with hybrid beamforming (HBF) is assessed for the first time. Distinct spatially heterogeneous user distributions (i.e., uniform, near-site, cell-edge, and weighted uniform and near-site) and propagation environments (i.e., line-of-sight (LoS) with multipath and non-line-of-sight (NLoS) with multipath) are considered. The cosecant-squared and flat-top shaped beam patterns are compared to the benchmark pencil beam pattern with a straightforward electrical downtilt. The LoS simulation results show that in case of unknown weight of user distribution scenarios, the cosecant-squared pattern is the most robust, with a gain of up to 16% in the average system throughput and up to 34% in the 90th percentile user throughout compared to the benchmark. If the near-site case has a greater probability of occurrence than the uniform user distribution (e.g., due to daily events and festivals), the flat-top pattern becomes preferable. In the NLoS scenario, the considered HBF architectures with elevation beam pattern shaping do not bring any performance disadvantages compared to the benchmark HBF.