Enhancement of 5G Millimeter-Wave Coverage in Indoor Scenarios by Passive Shaped-Beam Reflectarray Panels

This contribution proposes the use of passive reflectarray panels as an efficient and low-cost technology to enhance millimeter-wave coverage in 5G indoor scenarios. A dual-polarized shaped-beam reflectarray has been designed to produce a highly broadened beam in the azimuth plane (half-power beamwidth of 13°) with a deviation of 45° with respect to broadside. A single-layer reflectarray cell has been used to obtain an angularly-stable phase response at the 28 GHz band with independent phase control in each linear polarization. The phase shift distribution on the reflectarray panel has been computed by a phase-only pattern synthesis, considering the beam specifications of the indoor scenario. The reflectarray panel shows stable gain and side-lobe levels, and very low cross-polarization in a 1 GHz band (from 27.3 to 28.3 GHz).