Heat Transfer Enhancement in Passively Cooled 5G Base Station Antennas Using Thick Ground Planes

摘要

The thermal and electromagnetic effects of varying the ground plane thickness and aperture size of the 5G integrated base station antennas are investigated. A double-sided PCB structure is designed with antennas and digital beamforming chips on the opposite sides. Fully-passive cooling is achieved by using fanless CPU coolers attached to the chips. The simulation results indicate that as compared to the standard counterparts, much better cooling performance can be achieved using relatively thick ground planes with extended aperture sizes, with no significant effect on the electromagnetic properties.