ELECTRONICS DESIGN
New Advanced Circulators Overcome mmWave Design Challenges
Greater isolation and bandwidth enable telecom providers and radar technology designers to fully capitalise on the mmWave spectrum
A
s telecommunications providers race to deliver on the promise of 5G, research
and design projects are already looking towards 6G and beyond. The promise of ultra-fast broadband speeds - potentially as much as 10Gbit/s - can catapult cellular technology into new markets like smart cities, connected vehicles, defence, and the rapidly expanding IoT. However, a major hurdle awaits the
impending move up the millimeter wave (mmWave) spectrum; that being a lack of acceptable mmWave components. This threatens to not only delay the rollout of the high-band portion of the 5G spectrum (46GHz to 86GHz), but jeopardises the deployment of a number of systems needing to operate at the terahertz regime (100GHz – 10THz). “It is an enormous technical challenge we
are facing,” says Fred Daneshgaran, a California State University, Los Angeles, professor who specialises in RF design, telecommunications and quantum communications. As such, Daneshgaran is frequently brought in as lead technician on
some of the most cutting-edge RF military and telecom projects. “The only way to support the billions of
users at higher data rates is to keep utilising higher and higher frequency bands. So, components are going to have to catch up to those higher frequencies within the mmWave regime and then into the terahertz as well,” explains Daneshgaran. “The problem is, however, as you go up the spectrum it gets harder and harder to build critical components like circulators that can operate at those frequencies.”
Moving on up The higher-end of the 5G spectrum (26GHz to 86GHz) will provide much of the leap forward in data speeds, capacity, quality and reduced latency. However, at such frequencies the design of transmit/receive components becomes critical. Without advancements, the deployment of systems capable of operating even higher on the spectrum - within the terahertz regime (100GHz – 10THz) where 6G and 7G will operate - are also in jeopardy. Recognising that national security could be
affected, in late 2020 the Department of Defence in the US announced $600 million in awards for 5G experimentation and testing. Given this impetus, microwave components such as antennas, waveguides, isolators and circulators are now being developed that are capable of broadband operation at mmWave frequencies up to 330GHz and beyond. “One component that is especially critical
Micro Harmonics Circulators 32 DECEMBER/JANUARY 2022 | ELECTRONICS TODAY
to telecom infrastructure is the circulator,” Daneshgaran explains. “Antenna systems capable of both transmitting and receiving a
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