Università Roma Tre

The course is organized in 4 units as follows:

PART I – OVERVIEW OF CELLULAR SYSTEMS AND ANTENNAS
Basic concepts of cellular communication systems. Basic concepts of electromagnetic radiation: free-space green's function, hertz dipole, near-field and far-field. Basic concepts of antennas: historical perspective, antenna types, radiation mechanism, current distribution on linear antennas. Electrical and radiating properties of antennas: radiation intensity, radiation pattern, radiated power, directivity, efficiency, gain, beam-width, polarization, input impedance, bandwidth, effective length and effective area. Friis formula.

PART II – BASE-STATION ANTENNAS
Overview of base station antennas. Omni-directional antennas. Thin and thick dipole antennas. electrical and radiating properties of dipolar antennas. Broadband dipoles. Directive antennas. image principle and employment of reflectors. Dipolar antennas with reflectors. Antenna arrays: uniform antenna arrays for base station panels. Analysis and synthesis methods of the single antenna element of a base station panel. Design examples of omni-directional and directive dipole antennas for GSM900/1800 and UMTS. Space diversity and polarization diversity. Beam forming networks for antenna arrays. Mechanic and electric down tilt. Smart antennas and adaptive antennas.

PART III – ANTENNAS FOR MOBILE TERMINALS
Overview of mobile terminal antennas. Microstrip antennas: basic concepts. Electrical and radiating properties of microstrip antennas. Analysis of microstrip antennas by using the transmission line model. Design techniques of microstrip antennas working in linear, double-linear, and circular polarization. Examples of microstrip antennas for GSM900/1800 and UMTS mobile terminals. examples of microstrip antennas for Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. examples of panels of microstrip antennas to be used as indoor umts base station and Wi-Fi access point antennas.

PART IV – ANALYSIS AND DESIGN OF ANTENNAS (LAB ACTIVITY)
Analysis and design of antennas for base-station and mobile terminals by using electromagnetic simulators. Design of antenna arrays. Antenna measurements and reverse engineering.

The text books used as reference for the course are:

- "Antenna Theory: Analysis and Design", author: Constantin Balanis, editor: Wiley
- "Cellular communications explained from basics to 3G", author: Ian Poole, editor: Newnes
- "Fundamentals of cellular network planning and optimization 2G/2.5G/3G-evlolution to 4G", author: Ajay R. Mishra, editore: Wiley