A Multibeam Antenna Array Fed by a New Design of RF Beamforming Network

Space-based communication is becoming increasingly important in the current 5G landscape and the imminent arrival of the 6G mobile communication systems, which requires beams of antenna arrays to cover different directions to ensure high communications quality. To this end, the analog beamforming network (BFN) that can generate multiple beams simultaneously has attracted widespread attention and research. Traditional BFNs, such as Blass matrices, Butler matrices and Nolen matrices, were thoroughly studied and widely used in many applications. However, beams in these BFNs are dependent to each other, i.e., when one beams changes, other beams will be affected, which is a major drawback. To achieve flexible control of each beam, a new structure of BFN known as generalized joined coupler (GJC) Matrix was proposed [1]–[2]. Different from traditional BFNs, the GJC matrix can realize simultaneously and independently beam steering by changing the values of phase shifters within the network.