Phased Array Antennas are among the most important 5G enabling technologies. Optimizing a Phased Array Antenna (PAA) is an elaborate task, especially for PAAs with increased number of elements. Traditional optimization methods that are either based on greedy, local optimization such as gradient methods or consist of random walk solution space searches, are far from ideal for solving the problem of arbitrary pattern synthesis in 1D and 2D antenna arrays, mainly due to the high dimensional, multimodal functional domains involved but also due to the inherent limitations of these approaches e.g., the majority of these methods assume the object function is continuous or even differentiable. On the other hand, natural optimization methods, e.g., genetic algorithms, simulated annealing and particle swarm optimization can be used to tackle this problem efficiently. In this study, a genetic algorithm was developed for optimizing a Planar (2D) Phased Array Antenna, using a custom objective function so that the Array Factor has specific characteristics, in terms of directivity, beamwidth and side-lobe level (SLL). The experimental results showed that the genetic algorithm can be used for optimizing a 2D PAA with very satisfactory results.

We demonstrate experimentally a bandwidth-reconfigurable mmWave Fiber Wireless (FiWi) fronthaul bus topology for spectrally efficient and flexibly reconfigurable 5G Centralized-Radio Access Networks (C-RAN). The proposed fronthaul architecture includes four 1 Gb/s Intermediate Frequency over Fiber (IFoF) channels that can be flexibly allocated among two in-series Reconfigurable Optical Add/Drop Multiplexer (ROADM) integrated nodes, supporting in total 8 V-band 32-element Phased Array Antenna (PAA) terminals. The ROADM was fabricated as an integrated photonic device exploiting the ultra-low loss Si3N4TriPleX waveguide integration platform and an architectural layout based on cascaded MZI interleavers. The device has flat top response of 32.5 GHz with a Free Spectral Range (FSR) of 100 GHz and fiber-to-fiber losses of 5 dB, while the V-band PAA supports analog RF beamsteering capabilities within a 90°-sector and 1m wireless distance. Each of the FiWi links carries a 250 MBd QAM16 waveform enabling a total of 1 Gb/s rate per end user beam, complying with the 5G Key Performance Indicator (KPI) user-rate requirement. Bandwidth-reconfigurability is experimentally demonstrated by selectively dropping channels either at the first or at the second ROADM node, allowing in this way the bandwidth allocation to be flexibly defined between two different network segments. Both uplink and downlink performance are experimentally validated for different ratios of bandwidth allocation among the two nodes, revealing Error Vector Magnitude (EVM) values that meet the respective 3GPP signal quality specifications. The two-stage FiWi IFoF/mmWave fronthaul bus topology, based on a miniaturized, integrated, low loss Si3N4ROADM and supporting high-capacity wireless beamsteering capability can form a promising roadmap towards flexible and reconfigurable 5G C-RAN architectures.