Quantization effects of phase shifters on 5G mmWave antenna arrays

In this paper, we investigate the phase shifter quantization effect on the performance of mmWave antenna arrays for future 5G applications. Given a 2-bit phase shifter, 8-element antenna array configuration, the phase-shifter degrades the antenna array gain up to 3 dB for non-boresight directions. Also, spherical sector coverage over beamforming sector sweeps is reduced, so that the mobile radio becomes susceptible to the time variation of device´s orientation rotation. To evaluate the performance of an array antenna, the results shows that the robustness on the phase shifter degradation effects needs to be examined.