Phase-Only Pattern Nulling of Planar Antenna Arrays in mmWave Communications

Abstract

With the ultra-dense structure of future mmWave networks, the need for a fast and cost-effective pattern nulling technique is evident. In this paper, we investigate three different phase-only nulling methods to provide spatial filtering capability for the phased array antennas. First, the idea of small-phase perturbation is generalized to planar arrays which are more appropriate for mmWave applications. Two sub-optimal methods are further proposed which successively synthesize the nulls to reduce the computational latency. The proposed approaches provide a fast pattern re-configurability for 5G applications.