Multi-Radio Frequency Antenna for Sub-6 GHz 5G Carrier and Data Link Margin Enhancement

One notable feature of 5G/5G+ technologies different from previous mobile generations, such as LTE, is their ability to operate in a frequency range above 6 GHz. However, these higher-frequency bands are more susceptible to environmental conditions, hence the need for antennas with more directive properties and higher gains to mitigate and compensate for path loss. Various challenging scenarios present challenging design considerations for 5G and future 6G antenna designs such as 5G new radio (NR) sub-6 GHz (3.3–5 GHz), 5G NR mmWave (24–30 GHz), MIMO, and adaptive beamforming capabilities. This paper presents and analyses a wireless communication link budget of a novel planar multiband monopole antenna for sub-6 GHz 5G new radio (NR) frequency band applications, small satellites (including nanosatellites/CubeSat), smart IoT devices, and radar. The proposed antenna device consists of four monopole elements printed on an FR4 substrate, with a ground slot and a ground patch that operate with three different gain (dBi)/resonance (MHz) of (3.16, 3050), (4.52, 3420), and (5.43, 5380) and bandwidths of 868 MHz (2932–3800) and 664 MHz (5115–5819), respectively.