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5G SA EUTRAN Mobile Networks RF

Inside a 32×32 MIMO Antenna

A peek under the radome of 32×32 5G Active Antenna Unit

For the past few months I’ve had a Band 78 NR active antenna unit sitting next to my desk.

It’s a very cool bit of kit that doesn’t get enough love, but I thought I’d pop open the radome and take a peek inside.

Individual antenna elements

What I found very interesting is that it’s not all antennas in there!

… 29, 30, 31, 32. Yup. Checks out.

There are the expected number of antennas (I mean if I opened it up and found 31 antennas I’d have been surprised) but they don’t take up the whole volume of the unit, only about half,

AAU with Radome reinstalled

Well, after that strip show, back to sitting in my office until I need to test something 5G SA again…

One reply on “Inside a 32×32 MIMO Antenna”

Woahhh 😁 – there’s probably some super funky engineering behind getting the most out of this. Does each also have some chips, or it’s all centrally controlled from a single controller?

BTW: Somehow I was expecting 32 rows and 32 columns 🤪

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