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This communication presents a novel vertical polarized (VP) endfire phased array antenna (PAA) using heterogeneous beam elements (HBEs) for wide-angle scanning, where the HBE is a specially designed element with an inclined beam. First, the proposed low-profile and wideband endfire VP element is achieved by implementing an open-end cavity radiator with three slots. Additionally, by tilting the aperture of the VP element to realize gradient phase distribution, the HBE with an inclined beam is obtained, which is then used to form a VP HBE PAA. The desired array layout is achieved by adjusting the tilting angles of individual HBEs. Finally, a $1\times 4$ -element VP HBE PAA is designed, fabricated, and measured, exhibiting a 3-dB gain variation scanning range of ±72° across the entire 5G n258 band (24.25–27.5 GHz). Compared to the standard design, the VP HBE PAA provides an extended scanning range of ±12° while maintaining the same array size, with only a minimal decline of approximately 0.8 dBi in broadside realized gain. To the best of our knowledge, the proposed design achieves the widest scanning range compared to its predecessors.

Circularly polarized (CP) phased array antennas (PAAs) often face challenges in achieving wide element beams and axial ratio (AR) patterns simultaneously, thereby constraining their scanning ranges. To address this issue, this article introduces heterogeneous beam element (HBE) technology to the CP PAA design, proposing an offset segmented dielectric lens (OSDLs) beam tilting technology for implementing HBEs. By positioning the OSDL offset within the near-field region above one side of the element, the near-field region is partitioned into multiple segments with varying phase differences, achieving element beam tilting. The study provides a comprehensive analysis of the CP HBE PAA design, encompassing the CP element design with a wide spatial AR bandwidth and high isolation, as well as the principle and design guidelines of the OSDL beam tilting technology. Experimental results demonstrate a significant extension of the scanning range compared to the $4 \times 4$ -element CP standard PAA, with improvements ranging from 56° to 75° in the orthogonal plane and from 58° to 80° in the diagonal plane across the 17–20-GHz band while maintaining AR values below 3 dB. The effectiveness and robustness of the OSDL beam tilting technology underscore its potential as a universal HBE implementation approach.

This communication presents a novel compact wideband dual-polarized (DP) endfire antenna with a shared aperture. The design achieves a low-profile and wideband vertical-polarized (VP) element by utilizing an open-end cavity antenna with a U-slot and rectangular parasitic patch. A horizontal-polarized (HP) radiator is seamlessly integrated into the VP element by transforming the rectangular parasitic patch into a dipole, enabling structure reuse without affecting the VP mode. These designs enable the construction of a compact DP endfire antenna with a shared aperture while simultaneously enhancing performances, including impedance bandwidth, front-to-back ratio (FBR) level, polarization isolation, and cross-polarization. Moreover, a $1\times 4$ -element array with high gain is designed based on the proposed element. Prototypes are fabricated using low-temperature co-fired ceramics (LTCC) technology for antenna-in-package (AiP) applications. As the simulated and measured results demonstrate, the antennas achieve a wide overlapped DP impedance bandwidth of 24–30 GHz (22.2%) and a low profile of $0.12\lambda _{{0}}$ . Specifically, the VP FBR levels surpass 14 dB (element) and 16 dB (array), while the port isolations exceed 30 dB (element) and 25 dB (array). Overall, this design presents a promising solution for high-integration mmWave mobile systems.

This article presents a new design of an endfire phased array antenna (PAA) using heterogeneous beam elements (HBEs) for wide-angle scanning. The HBEs are specially designed elements with inclined and controllable beam directions, which incorporate a printed dipole and a rotary ground to achieve the desired beam inclination. Then, the PAAs are constructed based on the proposed HBE, and the array arrangement is realized by adjusting the beam-inclined angle of each element. As a result, the proposed HBE PAAs effectively maintain a stable effective aperture across various scanning angles and thus achieve a wide scanning range with a low gain variation. Prototypes of $1\times4$ and $1\times8$ -element HBE PAAs are designed, fabricated, and measured. The simulated and measured results reveal a significant improvement within the scanning range for the proposed HBE PAAs compared to their standard counterparts. The $1\times4$ and $1\times8$ -element HBE PAAs achieve impressive scanning ranges of $\ge \pm 70^{\circ }$ and $\ge \pm 80^{\circ }$ , respectively, within a wide impedance bandwidth of 24.25–29.5 GHz (19.8%), at the cost of a slight decline in normal-direction gain (< 1.2 dBi). This design offers a promising solution to enhance the performance of PAAs for mmWave mobile terminals.

A phased array antenna (PAA) incorporating a dielectric dome lens (DL) extends its scanning range but concurrently experiences a notable reduction in broadside gain due to the inherent diverging lens characteristics near the broadside. Instead of using a whole dielectric DL, this article proposes a dielectric top-truncated dome lens (TTDL) to address this issue. The approach mitigates broadside gain reduction by eliminating the dielectric DL’s inherent diverging characteristics near the broadside through truncation of its upper portion. The study elucidates the design fundamentals for the dielectric TTDL, encompassing an analysis of the truncation impact and the corresponding phase compensation strategy aimed at mitigating this truncation effect. Utilizing ray-tracing methods and full-wave simulations, this work comprehensively evaluates the performance disparity between the TTDL and conventional DL, revealing the effectiveness of the proposed approach. Additionally, the structural flexibility of the TTDL is discussed to facilitate a more compact architecture. Experimental validation of a TTDL antenna, incorporating a feed array and a compact dielectric TTDL, is presented. Results demonstrate that within the 26.5 to 29.5 GHz operating band, the compact TTDL effectively extends the scanning range from 60° to 80° while avoiding broadside gain reduction and maintaining a gain fluctuation within 5 dB.

This communication introduces an innovative distributed integrated antenna (DIA) architecture for millimeter-wave (mmWave) mobile terminals. The DIA discretizes the antenna into multiple components: basic structures and auxiliary structures, which are located on different parts of the mobile terminals, including chip, package, PCB, and shell. Meanwhile, the signal pathway between these components is achieved by the antenna’s internal electromagnetic coupling rather than a conductive connection, leading to lower radiation loss and larger availability in design space. This communication, moreover, presents several representative schemes of the DIA architecture and compares them with conventional architectures. In particular, a new scheme using the same basic structure is proposed to further reduce manufacturing costs and simplify the production cycle. To demonstrate this new scheme, three antenna examples using the same dipole on the package are designed. By combining different auxiliary structures on PCB/shell, varying radiation patterns, including beam steering, gain enhancement, and polarization conversion, are achieved. The simulated and measured results both show that all antennas can reach a wide impedance bandwidth of 24.25–29.5 GHz, with a high radiation efficiency exceeding 70%; therefore, the feasibility of the new scheme for DIA architecture is sufficiently verified.