Influence Analysis of ZrO2 Ceramic for Cellular Phones on 5G mm-Wave Antenna Performance

In this paper, the influences of ZrO2 ceramic on the fifth generation mobile communications (5G) millimeter-wave (mm-Wave) antenna performance are studied. A 28-GHz 2 × 2 non-stacked patch antenna array and a 28-GHz 2 ×2 stacked patch antenna array are designed on dielectric substrates as the performance baseline. Based on the two types of antenna arrays, various ZrO2 ceramic thicknesses and various gaps between the ZrO2 ceramic and the antenna arrays are simulated to get quick understanding of the ZrO2 ceramic influence on the antenna performance. From the simulated results, it can be found that the ZrO2 ceramic has different influences on different types of antenna arrays. Besides, for both of the two types of antenna arrays, when the thicknesses of ZrO2 ceramic are close or equal to integer multiples of 0.5 guided wavelengths (λg), the antenna performance in the material-loading cases gets close to that in the free space (FS). Also, when the thicknesses of ZrO2 ceramic are close or equal to odd multiples of 0.25 (λg) and the gaps between the ZrO2 ceramic and the antenna array are close or equal to integer multiples 0.5 FS wavelengths (λg), the focusing effects of electromagnetic (EM) beams get significant for both arrays. The findings comply with the EM wave propagation theory and can be applied to radome designs of Terahertz (THz) antenna arrays.