electronics Article Design of True Time Delay Millimeter Wave Beamformers for 5G Multibeam Phased Arrays Dimitrios I. Lialios 1, Nikolaos Ntetsikas 2, Konstantinos D. Paschaloudis 2 , Constantinos L. Zekios 1,* , Stavros V. Georgakopoulos 1 and George A. Kyriacou 2,* 1 College of Engineering & Computing, Florida International University, Miami, FL 33174, USA; dlial001@fiu.edu (D.I.L.); georgako@fiu.edu (S.V.G.) 2 Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Democritus University of Thrace, 67100 Xanthi, Greece;
[email protected] (N.N.);
[email protected] (K.D.P.) * Correspondence: kzekios@fiu.edu (C.L.Z.);
[email protected] (G.A.K.) Received: 15 July 2020; Accepted: 10 August 2020; Published: 18 August 2020 Abstract: Millimeter wave (mm-Wave) technology is likely the key enabler of 5G and early 6G wireless systems. The high throughput, high capacity, and low latency that can be achieved, when mm-Waves are utilized, makes them the most promising backhaul as well as fronthaul solutions for the communication between small cells and base stations or between base stations and the gateway. Depending on the channel properties different communication systems (e.g., beamforming and MIMO) can accordingly offer the best solution. In this work, our goal is to design millimeter wave beamformers for switched beam phased arrays as hybrid beamforming stages. Specifically, three different analog beamforming techniques for the frequency range of 27–33 GHz are presented. First, a novel compact multilayer Blass matrix is proposed. Second, a modified dummy-ports free, highly efficient Rotman lens is introduced. Finally, a three-layer true-time-delay tree topology inspired by microwave photonics is presented.