NAFEMS Americas and Digital Engineering (DE) teamed up (once again) to present CAASE, the (now Virtual) Conference on Advancing Analysis & Simulation in Engineering, on June 16-18, 2020!

CAASE20 brought together the leading visionaries, developers, and practitioners of CAE-related technologies in an open forum, unlike any other, to share experiences, discuss relevant trends, discover common themes, and explore future issues, including:
-What is the future for engineering analysis and simulation?
-Where will it lead us in the next decade?
-How can designers and engineers realize its full potential?
What are the business, technological, and human enablers that will take past successful developments to new levels in the next ten years?

Resource Abstract

The 5th generation (5G) mobile networks promise a revolution in the way we connect. With faster data transfer and the capacity to support a higher density of users, 5G is expected to offer high speed internet, high definition video streaming, efficiency and real time connectivity to IoT enabled devices, thus promising ubiquitous connectivity at three times the speed of 4G. Additionally, mm-wave communication has become one of the most attractive techniques for 5G systems implementation since it has the potential to achieve these requirements and enable multi-Gbps throughput.



With that in mind, beam-steerable high gain phased array antenna design is the key component for 5G cellular systems since that will directly influence the capacity of cellular networks by enhancing the signal to interference ratio (SIR) using narrow transmit beams that will offer sufficient signal power at the receiver terminal at larger distance in urban environments. Several antenna array configurations were investigated for 5G applications such as patch antennas, printed microstrip antennas as well as cylindrical conformal microstrip antennas. Recently, its been studied that 5G systems can use adaptive beamforming antenna arrays by enabling the technology of multi-user massive MIMO which can achieve more efficient usage of the radiated power.



The presented work demonstrates a realistic design of 4x4 mm-wave planar phased-array antenna for 5G communication. Each element is connected to a phase shifter that build up the total array-beam which steers the antenna via constructive or destructive interference. The goal is to install the modeled array on a car and allow vehicle to everything (V2X) communication with installed street wireless infrastructure. Link budget analysis of the antennas in their installed environments using appropriate RF propagation models and standards-based radio libraries is illustrated to assess the quality of service for the system in the presence of other potentially interfering wireless systems.



Design workflow for 5G phased-array transceiver implementation at 28GHz is proposed in this work where both 3D full wave implementation of the antenna array and the feeding network associated with it as well as circuit co-simulation with the rest of the transceiver chain including power amplifier (PA) , low noise amplifier (LNA), switch and phase shifters are well-presented to enable engineers and antenna designers uncover different design aspects. Several design challenges occur at this high frequency band due to the integration of physical and circuit-based models from various manufacturing technologies. It is crucial to understand the coupling between these mm-wave components and overcome any undesired interference. The resulted cross-talk, coupling and isolation plots were obtained to anticipate possible degradation in the output signal quality that results into interference and distortion of channel performance.



Finally, authors will be looking into the electro-thermal design aspect for the complete design chain to explore the thermal stability of miniature wireless assemblies to ensure that the entire system conforms to its expected behavior. Such power-hungry applications with various environmental conditions can cause swings in device temperatures, leading to thermal cycling effects. Thus, its very important to assess the electronics-thermal management aspects of the overall system design. The presented multi-solution platform leverages high-performance computing that can be deployed across the enterprise, allowing designers and engineering experts to collaborate more effectively.