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Moving Towards 6G Communication Systems: Challenges and Opportunities for Antenna Designers

Submission Deadline: 31 December 2022 (closed)

Guest Editors

Dr. Muhammad Inam Abbasi, Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka (UTeM), Malaysia.
Dr. Muhammad Ramlee Kamaruddin, Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia, Malaysia.
Dr. Qammer Hussain Abbasi, University of Glasgow, U.K.

Summary

Modern-day communication systems progressing towards 6G are creating a number of challenges and opportunities for researchers, especially to the antenna designers. The propagation issues related to these modern-day communication systems can be avoided by selecting a suitable type of antenna for these systems. Array antennas are considered a decent candidate to compensate for the issues regarding path loss for short-range communications. Two-dimensional arrays with large electrical apertures can provide narrow beamwidth, which is essential for 6G operations. Large electrical aperture at mm-waves does not affect the physical profile of the antenna due to short wavelengths. Massive MIMO systems have also been suggested for these systems due to their possible integrity with small cells. However, compared to array antennas, massive MIMO systems are not the potential candidate for 6G systems due to their design complexity and less adaptability with shorter wavelengths.

There are many other types of antennas that can be found in the literature for 5G and 6G operations. Their main purpose is to achieve wide bandwidth to support the high throughput of these systems. The operation of antenna systems for 6G compatibility largely depends on the enhancement of its bandwidth performance. Massive bandwidth is required in the mm-wave range to support high data requirements. The bandwidth of the order of GHz is attainable at the mm-wave frequency range, but some extra design efforts are still required to fully utilize it with other requirements.

However, only enhancing the bandwidth of the proposed antenna does not solve all issues regarding 6G compatibility. Significant improvements in some other parameters like gain, efficiency, polarization diversity and adaptive beam steering are also considered as a need of time. It is because the antenna performance for 6G can directly depend on the mode of antenna operation. The antenna used for transmission or reception can significantly affect its required parameters for 6G operation. It is widely believed that the requirement of improvement in antenna parameters for transmission is higher than the same parameters for the reception.

This special issue is aimed to publish comprehensive research works that are done in order to design efficient antennas for 6G communication systems.



Keywords

Antennas for 6G communication systems
Design and measurement techniques for antenna arrays
Reflectarray antennas
Phased arrays for future communication systems
Massive MIMOs
Reconfigurable antennas
Antenna measurements for 6G and future systems
Beam steerable and polarization diverse antennas
High gain antennas
Chip antennas for 6G communications
Wearable and flexible antennas for 6G communications
Antenna optimization techniques for 6G and future communications

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