Active Integrated Antenna for Intelligent Arrays in 6G Non-Terrestrial Networks

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This ECR international collaboration grant is aiming to build an international network and research hub together with the pioneering research on active integrated antennas for intelligent arrays in the emerging 6G non-terrestrial networks, to realize and boost the new telecommunication era of the internet of everything and the connection of everywhere. Regarding the B5G (5G-beyond) and 6G, there are still quite a number of challenges waiting to be solved. One of the most important issues is the power efficiency of the millimeter-wave (mmW) systems, so as to the mmW active antenna systems. According to the telecommunications company Ericsson's predictions, the market for the service providers in the 5G area will grow to around USD 700 billion by 2030. Thus there will be a huge market and demand of mmW active antenna systems especially for the massive MIMO systems, which requires at least 64 antenna elements (an 8 by 8 array). However, the current power amplifiers on market only offer a power-added efficiency around 22%, leading to significant energy into waste like the heat, which will destroy and reduce the operation life of the devices too. Hence, this project is dedicated to improve the power efficiency of the mmW array antennas by proposing a novel substrate integrated active array antennas, which is of great advantages in terms of manufacturing, cost and scalability. An additional technique of the active antenna in substrate packaging (AAiSP) will be explored to increase the application flexibility for the 6G service providers. Moreover, align with the EPSRC strategy plan 2022-2025 on the priority mission of AI, a machine leaning based precoding technology will be developed to optimize the mmW non-linear array antennas. This project integrates two ongoing Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions projects ANTERRA and HARMONY, both are dedicated to exploring the directly matched power amplified antennas and arrays. The PI also actively interacts with the EurAAP working group of Active Array Antennas. The collaboration project enables the PI actively working with and centered by experienced academics and engineers from the USA, France and Netherlands, leading the PI, his institute and the UK to be the world-class people, organization and place with world-class innovation, so as to be a world leader, which is also the vision of the latest EPSRC strategy plan.