Cost-Effective Surface-Mount Magnetoelectric Dipole Antenna Based on Ball Grid Array Packaging Technology for 5G Millimeter-Wave New Radio Band Applications

This article presents a cost-effective miniature surface-mount magnetoelectric (ME) dipole antenna. The antenna is realized by a single-layer FR4 substrate and combined with ball grid array (BGA) packaging technology to achieve miniaturization in size. Due to BGA packaging technology, the surface-mount capability allows interconnection between the proposed antenna and other surface-mount devices using a flip-chip interconnect technology, replacing bulky connectors. The proposed antenna element is very compact. Specifically, the electric dipole of the proposed antenna consists of four patches, whereas the magnetic dipole consists of two rows of plated through-holes and a metal ground between them. In addition, the electric and magnetic dipoles are simultaneously excited by an L-shaped metal probe. The prototype has been manufactured and carefully verified. Experimental results show that the proposed antenna element has a -10-dB bandwidth of 23% in the range of 25-31.5 GHz and achieves a peak realized gain of 6.98 dBi at 26 GHz. The dimensions of the proposed antenna element are only 5 mm x 5 mm x 1.8 mm. The proposed antenna elements can be widely used in the 5G millimeter-wave N257 (26.5-29.5 GHz) and N261 (27.5-28.35 GHz) bands.