Tsinghua Science and Technology 2024, 29(5): 1593-1603 https://doi.org/10.26599/TST.2023.9010127

Open Access | Issue | Published: 02 May 2024

Focusing Ability Enhancement in Broadside Direction of Array: From UCA to UCCA

Show Author's Information Hide Author's Information Zidong Wu^¹, Linglong Dai^¹(

)

1Department of Electronic Engineering, Tsinghua University, and also with Beijing National Research Center for Information Science and Technology (BNRist), Beijing 100084, China

Keywords:

extremely large-scale antenna array (ELAA), uniform concentric circular array (UCCA), near-field communications

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Wu Z, Dai L. Focusing Ability Enhancement in Broadside Direction of Array: From UCA to UCCA. Tsinghua Science and Technology, 2024, 29(5): 1593-1603. https://doi.org/10.26599/TST.2023.9010127

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Abstract

To meet the ever-increasing demand for the data rates of wireless communications, extremely large-scale antenna array (ELAA) has emerged as one of the candidate technologies for future 6G communications. The significantly increased number of antennas in ELAA gives rise to near-field communications, necessitating tailored beamforming techniques within the near-field regions to accommodate the spherical-wave propagation characteristics. Among various array geometries of ELAA, uniform circular array (UCA) has gained much attention for its distinct capability of maintaining uniform beam pattern across different azimuth angles. However, existing analysis of near-field UCA beamforming indicates that the near-field region severely declines in the broadside of UCA, where the system fails to benefit from near-field communications. To tackle this problem, the near-field beamforming technique of uniform concentric circular arrays (UCCAs) is investigated in this paper, which has the potential to enlarge the near-field region in the broadside direction. First, the analysis of beamforming gain in the 3D space with UCA and UCCA is provided. Then, the distinct beamforming characteristics that set UCCA apart from UCA are delineated, revealing the superiority of UCCA in extending the near-field region in broadside at the cost of slightly reduced near-field region in the coplane. Simulation results are provided to verify the effectiveness of the theoretical analysis of beamforming gain with UCCA and the enhanced focusing ability of UCCA in the broadside direction.

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Focusing Ability Enhancement in Broadside Direction of Array: From UCA to UCCA

Show Author's information Hide Author's Information Zidong Wu^¹, Linglong Dai^¹(

)

1Department of Electronic Engineering, Tsinghua University, and also with Beijing National Research Center for Information Science and Technology (BNRist), Beijing 100084, China

Abstract

Keywords: extremely large-scale antenna array (ELAA), uniform concentric circular array (UCCA), near-field communications

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Publication history

Received: 27 August 2023

Revised: 14 October 2023

Accepted: 23 October 2023

Published: 02 May 2024

Issue date: October 2024

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Acknowledgements

Acknowledgment

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 62031019) and the European Commission through the H2020-MSCA-ITN META WIRELESS Research Project (No. 956256).

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The articles published in this open access journal are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).