dirk manteuffel

Multi-Mode Multi-Port Antennas (M³PA) for 6G Antenna Systems

6G mobile communications aims to provide ubiquitous connectivity in a so called “cyber-physical world”. Related applications require a merge of sensing systems (e.g. radar) and communication systems. Such Joint Communication and Sensing (JCaS) comes along with new challenges as traditionally radar and communication system are developed with different demands. They result in different requirements for the radio system in general and for the antennas in particular. Conventional antenna arrays usually consist of uniform antenna elements having a static element pattern. According to the primary beam direction, either broadside or endfire elements are chosen. Beamforming patterns then suffer from scan loss not only due to the aperture orientation but also due to the element pattern. Furthermore, co-located elements in a multi-antenna system suffer from mutual coupling that can be reduced to an acceptable level for conventional communication systems but is yet unacceptable for radar systems that require full-duplex operation. As JCaS aims at using the same common infrastructure for both communication and radar, those incompatibilities must be eliminated. In this presentation, so-called Multi-Mode Multi-Port Antenna (M³PA) elements are proposed as a unit cell for such JCaS arrays. M³PA are antenna elements having multiple uncorrelated antenna ports which are mutually uncoupled thanks to the use of symmetry properties of their modal antenna currents. The ports provide both broadside and off-broadside patterns that can be flexibly selected by the beamformer. As such, they have some potential to increase the scan range of the array when broadside modes are used for near broadside scanning and off-broadside modes are used for larger scan angles. M³PAs can also be used to generate a virtually layered array by using a certain port per element for one array layer that is used e.g. for communication while another port per element is independently used as another array layer for a radar system. Furthermore, using the orthogonality properties of M³PA already enables intrinsic decoupling of the ports of a certain element which is a prerequisite for full-duplex operation. The presentation will introduce the concept of the M³PAs and will discuss potentials and challenges when they are used in antenna arrays.

Dirk Manteuffel was born in Issum, Germany, in 1970. He received the Dipl.- Ing. and Dr.-Ing. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Duisburg-Essen, Duisburg, Germany, in 1998 and 2002, respectively. From 1998 to 2009, he was with IMST, Kamp-Lintfort, Germany. As a Project Manager, he was responsible for industrial antenna development and advanced projects in the field of antennas and electromagnetic (EM) modeling. From 2009 to 2016, he was a Full Professor of wireless communications with Christian-Albrechts-University, Kiel, Germany. Since June 2016, he has been a Full Professor and the Executive Director of the Institute of Microwave and Wireless Systems, Leibniz University Hannover, Hannover, Germany. His research interests include electromagnetics, antenna integration, and EM modeling for mobile communications and biomedical applications. Dr. Manteuffel was the Director of the European Association on Antennas and Propagation from 2012 to 2015. He served on the Administrative Committee (AdCom) of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society from 2013 to 2015. From 2014 to 2022 he served as an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation. Since 2005 he has been a Director of the European School on Antennas (ESoA) and organized several courses on Industrial Antennas Design and Characteristic Modes. Since 2009, he has been an appointed member of the Committee “Antennas” of the German Verband der Elektrotechnik, Elektronik und Informationstechnik - Informationstechnische Gesellschaft (VDE-ITG).