mmWave Phased Array in Mobile Terminal for 5G

Mobile System with Consideration of Hand Effect

Kun Zhao1,2, Jakob Helander2,3, Zhinong Ying2, Daniel Sjberg3, Mats Gustafsson3 and Sailing He1
1. Department of Electromagnetic Engineering, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden
2. Network Technology, SONY Mobile Communications AB, Lund, Sweden
3. Department of Electrical and Information Technology, Lund University, Lund, Sweden
Abstract In this paper, the latest study of the millimeter
wave (mmWave) phased array in mobile terminals for the 5G
communication is presented. New parameters for evaluating the
mmWave phased array in mobile terminals are introduced.
Furthermore, the hand effect on the phased array in mobile
terminal at 15 GHz is also investigated.
KeywordsmmWave, 5th Generation Mobile System, mobile
terminal, phased array, hand effect

I. INTRODUCTION
Due to the shortage of the frequency spectrum below 6
GHz, the mmWave (10 GHz to 300 GHz) band has been seen
the potential carrier frequency for the 5th generation mobile
communication (5G) [1]-[2]. However, from the Friis formula
(1), we can see the free space path loss will be much higher in
mmWave band than current mobile networks due to the shorter
wavelength. Consequently, antenna gains of both in base
stations and mobile terminals needs to be increased to
compensate the higher path loss without consuming any more
power.
= + + 20 log (

(a)

60

(1)

For mobile terminals, thanks to the small electrical length

of mmWave antennas, antenna arrays can be implemented in
terminals to achieve a high gain. However, the high gain
directly translates into a relatively narrow beamwidth, which
will reduce the space coverage of terminal antennas, and
increase the possibility of poor links [3]. Therefore, the beam
steering function for arrays becomes necessary to maintain a
good link when incoming signals come from different angles
[4]-[5], and this function can be realized by phased arrays.
As the beamsteering of phased arrays have a limited
scanned angular range, it is important to characterize the
achievable space coverage of such a system. In [5] the total
scanned pattern and the coverage efficiency are introduced.
The total scan pattern is regained from all array patterns
corresponding to different phase shifts, by drawing out the best
achievable gain at every angular distribution point (, ) (Fig.
1(a)). For example, in Fig. 1(b), a total scanned pattern of a
four elements antenna array in a mobile terminal with
continuously phase shifts from -180 to 180 is plotted.
Comparing to the radiation pattern of fixed phased arrays, the
total scan pattern can show all the possible space coverage.

(b)
Fig. 1. (a) Gain threshold level Gmin and concept of total scan pattern of
phased array gain (pictures from [5]) (b) the total scanned pattern of a phased
array comparing to

Furthermore, we bring up the coverage efficiency to

quantify the space coverage of a phased array, which is defined
as the ratio between the covered area and the total area.

(2)

The coverage area can be defined as the total scan pattern

coverage with respect to a threshold gain level. The total area
includes the whole surrounding sphere and the threshold gain
will depend on the path loss, transmitting/receiving power level
and transmitting antenna gain according to (1).
The coverage efficiency of some typical phased arrays in
mobile terminals has been studied in [3]-[4]. In this paper,

Antenna arrays at 15GHz are studied since this frequency has

been selected as a demo candidate for the 5G communication
by NTT Docomo. We further develop the antenna array
configuration and bring about the diversity and MIMO
functions by using two subarrays in this paper. Moreover, as
mobile terminals mainly operate when they are hold by users,
the hand effect on the antenna array has also been investigated.
All simulations are done by CST 2014. Since the mobile
terminal antennas will face to arbitrary directions in reality, the
incoming wave is assumed to uniformly distribute in an
isotropic environment. Since base stations can track the
polarization of terminal antennas and optimize the polarization
of transmitted signals, we assume that no polarization
mismatch exists in the system.

(a)

Phase
Shifter

Phi1

2*Phi1

3*Phi1 4*Phi1

Phi2

Power Input

2*Phi2

3*Phi2 4*Phi2

Power Input

(b)
Fig. 2. (a) the array configuration and its elements radiation patterns in a 6inch
mobile terminal; (b) the schematic of our phase array system

II. ANTENNA ARRAY

A. Antenna Array Setup
In this study, the phased array is composed by eight notch
antennas and separated slightly less than 0/2 at 15 GHz in a 6
inch terminal is studied, which is shown in Fig. 2(a). All array
elements are located in a row and on the top of the mobile
terminal. Each four elements compose a sub array and a phase
shift progression that is independent of the adjacent subarray,
which is shown in Fig. 2(b). Thus, their beams can be steered
separately, making the pattern diversity feasible. Furthermore,
it also increases the degree of freedom for steering beams and
the coverage efficiency can be increased comparing to a single
array with eight elements, while a trade-off is made with
respect to maximum achievable gain (Fig. 3) [4]. Furthermore,
we can switch between the antenna diversity scheme and
MIMO scheme by two subarrays based on the channel
scenarios.

Fig. 3. Illustration of pattern diversity receiving scheme with two subarrays

Subarray 2

In Fig.4, the beamsteering of subarray 1 with 0and 150

phase shift in free space are presented. Its total scanned pattern
from +180to -180phase shift can also be found in Fig. 1(b).
We will also present the measurement results in the
presentation.

Subarray 1

Subarray 2

(a)

Subarray 1

(b)

Fig. 4. Array pattern for subarray 1 at (a) 0phase shift and (b) 150phase
shift

Subarray 2 Subarray 1

4
3
2
1

(a)

(b)

(c)

Fig. 5. User cases are studied in this paper: (a) single hand gripping, (b) dual
hand gripping and (c) the single finger touching

E-plane

H-plane

B. Hand Effect
The Hand effect is always a critical issue for mobile
terminal. In order to simulate the hand effect, the dielectric
property of human hand at 15 GHz must be selected carefully.
The skin depth of electrical field at 15 GHz on human skin is
around 2 mm, and the skin on palm is the thickest part on
human body which can be as thick as 2mm [6]. Therefore, the

skin layer plays the most important role in the hand effect at 15
GHz. In our study, for simplicity, a homogenous hand phantom
with skin material is used for simulations. The permittivity of
the skin at 15 GHz is set to 26.40 and the loss tangent to 0.63
[7].
Three user cases are studied: the single hand gripping, the
dual hand hold gripping and the single finger touching, which
are shown in Fig. 4
In the single hand gripping case, coverage efficiencies and
total scanned patterns of subarray 1 and subarray 2 are almost
the same as in the free space. The hand effect at 15GHz is
lower comparing to the current cellular frequency, the reason is
that the effective distance between the hand and the antennas
are larger due to the shorter wavelength.

(a)

In the dual hand case, coverage efficiencies of subarray 1

and subarray 2 are presented in Fig. 7. Unlike the single hand
case, both subarrays show a dramatic degrading of the
coverage efficiency, which most likely is an effect of the close
proximity of the index finger. Furthermore, the total scan
pattern is also changed by the hand phantom; as the main beam
of the subarray is reflected towards the space aligned with the
right hand ( > 120).

(b)
Fig. 7. (a) Coverage efficiency in dual hand gripping positiona and (b) the
total scanned pattern of subarray 1

(a)

(b)
Subarray 1

Fig. 6. (a) Coverage efficiency in the single hand gripping positiona and (b)
the total scanned pattern of subarray 1

Subarray 2

Fig. 8. Coverage efficiency and total scanned pattern in the single finger
touching position

Since the wavelength is relatively small at 15GHz, which

makes the hand can only effect the array propagation when it is
proximate to the array. Therefore, we design an extreme case
that one of the sub arrays is totally blocked by the index finger,
which is shown in Fig. 5(c). With single finger touching case,
we can see from Fig. 6, when the minimum gain requirement is
larger than 1, the coverage efficiency of subarray 1 is

decreased rapidly, and its total scanned pattern is totally

changed by the finger. However, the subarray 2 is almost not
affected by the hand phantom. In this case, the diversity
technology can be used to select the best subarray in terms of
the signal to noise ratio (SNR).

REFERENCES
[1]

[2]

CONCLUSION
In the paper, the latest study of the mmWave phased array
in mobile terminals for 5G communication is presented. The
recently introduced parameters; the total scan pattern and the
coverage efficiency, are presented with the aim to emphasize
their importance for evaluating phased array antennas in the
mobile terminal. Different antenna array schemes are
introduced and the advantages of using two subarrays are
presented. Furthermore, we have also investigated the hand
effect on the antenna array at 15 GHz. Where we can see that
the hand effect can change the array pattern and total scanned
pattern dramatically when it get close to the array. However,
with two sub arrays configuration, the switch diversity can be
used to against the hand effect.

[3]

[4]

[5]
[6]

[7]

Rappaport, T. S., Sun, S., et al., Millimeter Wave Mobile

Communications for 5G Cellular: It Will Work!, IEEE Access, Vol. 1,
May 2013
Roh, W., Seol, J-Y., et al., Millimeter-Wave Beamforming as an
Enabling Technology for 5G Cellular Communications: Theoretical
Feasibility and Prototype Results, IEEE Communications Magazine,
Vol. 52, No. 2, Feb. 2014
T. Bai and R. Heath, Jr., Coverage and Rate Analysis for MillimeterWave Cellular Networks, IEEE Trans. Commun., vol. 14, no. 2, pp.
11001114, Feb. 2015.
Wonbin Hong; Kwang-Hyun Baek; Youngju Lee; Yoongeon Kim;
Seung-Tae Ko, "Study and prototyping of practically large-scale
mmWave antenna systems for 5G cellular devices," Communications
Magazine, IEEE , vol.52, no.9, pp.63-69, September 2014
Helander, J., Millimeter Wave Antenna Technology in Mobile
Terminal and Station, Masters Thesis, Lund University, July 2014
Gillian S. Ashcroft, Teresa Greenwell-Wild, and Mark W. J. Ferguson
(1999). "Topical Estrogen Accelerates Cutaneous Wound Healing in
Aged Humans Associated with an Altered Inflammatory Response". The
American Journal of Pathology155 (4): 11371146.
C Gabriel, S Gabriel and E Corthout The dielectric properties of
biological tissues: I. Literature survey Phys. Med. Biol. 41 (1996)
22312249.

The author has requested enhancement of the downloaded file. All in-text references underlined in blue are linked to publications on ResearchGate.