Power Consumption and Radiation Trade-offs in Phased Arrays for 5G Wireless Transport

5G access network targets mmWave frequencies for Enhanced Mobile Broadband scenarios. This in turn leads to densification of the base stations to overcome the high propagation losses of mmWaves. Furthermore, 5G fronthaul/backhaul network is expected to be fiber optic based. However, a fully optical network is not feasible in hyper dense scenarios, mainly because of the cost it represents. This leaves enough space for point-to-point wireless links. Stepping forward, new wireless backhaul network is expected to be reconfigurable to satisfy the dynamic nature of the mobile traffic. Phased Array Antenna (PAA) on backhaul equipment is a promising solution to answer this need. However, there are challenges to overcome before using it in a commercial equipment, power consumption is one of them and this paper tries to summarize possible solutions to minimize it, providing that the total system gain of the current equipment is preserved and the regulatory radiation masks are fulfilled.