Experimental results show the device can provide continuous ‘wide-angle’ beam steering, allowing it to track a moving mobile phone user in the same way that a satellite dish turns to track a moving object, but with significantly enhanced speeds.
Devised by University of Birmingham researchers, the technology has demonstrated vast improvements in data transmission efficiency at frequencies ranging across the millimetre wave spectrum, specifically those identified for 5G (mmWave) and 6G, where high efficiency is currently only achievable using slow, mechanically steered antenna solutions.
For 5G mmWave applications, prototypes of the beam-steering antenna at 26GHz are said to have shown unprecedented data transmission efficiency.
The device is fully compatible with existing 5G specifications that are currently used by mobile communications networks and does not require the complex and inefficient feeding networks required for commonly deployed antenna...