Abstract—A low wind-load light-weight broad-band multi-beam base station antenna has been developed. It can generate any required number of beams with the required beamwidths. It can have horizontal and vertical sectorization at the same time. Vertical sectorization doubles the overall number of beams. It will be very valuable in LTE-A and 5G. It can be used to serve vertically split inner and outer cells, which improves system performance. The intersection between the beams of the proposed multi-beam antenna can be controlled by optimizing the design parameters of the antenna. The gain at the points of intersection between the beams, the null filling and the overlap between the beams can all be modified. The proposed multi-beam base station antenna can cover an unlimited number of wireless applications, regardless of their frequency bands. It can simultaneously cover all, current and future, wireless technology generations such as 2G, 3G, 4G (LTE), --- etc. For example, in LTE, it covers the bands 450-470 MHz, 690-960 MHz, 1.4-2.7 GHz and 3.3-3.8 GHz. It has at least 2 ports for each band in each beam for ±45° polarizations. It can include up to 72 ports or even more, which could facilitate any further needed capacity expansions. Keywords—Base station antenna, multi-beam antenna, smart antenna, vertical sectorization. I. INTRODUCTION HE most common configuration for the wireless communication network plan is the three sectored solution which involves a base station serving three hexagonal shaped cells or sectors as shown in Fig. 1 (a). In a three-sector configuration, a given base station antenna serves a 120° sector. Three of these 120° sectors cover 360°. Other sectorization configurations may also be used. For example, Fig. 1 (b) shows a six-sector configuration in which each antenna serves a 60° sector. In order to increase the system capacity, the number of sectors has to be increased such that each antenna serves a smaller area. For example, the performance analyses in coverage and capacity of Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) show that the number of simultaneous users increases by increasing sectors. Furthermore, it is known that for higher data rates, the coverage will be smaller when cell area is considered without sectors. But increasing sectors with same parameters makes extensive coverage for higher data rates [1]. Mohamed Sanad and Noha Hassan are with the Faculty of Engineering, Cairo University, Giza, Egypt (e-mail: msanad@amantantennas.com, nhassan@eng1.cu.edu.eg). This research was fully financed by and assigned for Amant Antennas (www.amantantennas.com). (a) Three sectors (b) Six sectors Fig. 1 Different cell sectorization schemes Sectorization could be horizontal (in azimuth plane) and vertical (in elevation plane) as shown in Fig. 2. Vertical sectorization doubles the number of the horizontally sectorized beams. It can also eliminate the need for the complicated vertical tilting. Vertical Sectorization can be used to serve vertically split inner and outer cells, which improves system performance. It is very useful for users that may be at high elevations as shown in Fig. 3. However, with the currently used base station antenna phased array technology, covering narrow sectors requires more radiating elements than antennas covering wider sectors. Thus, costs, weight and size requirements increase as a cell is divided into a greater number of sectors. Therefore, multi-beam base station antennas have been proposed. Fig. 2 Vertical and horizontal sectorization In this paper, a low-cost light-weight broadband multi-beam base station antenna configuration is proposed. It provides simultaneous vertical and horizontal sectorization over the whole LTE Spectrum. It can be used in Full Dimension Multiple Input Multiple Output (FD-MIMO) systems which is a key enabling technology in the Advance Long Term Evolution (LTE-A) and the 5G [2], [3]. The multi-beam base Mohamed Sanad, Noha Hassan A Multiple Beam LTE Base Station Antenna with Simultaneous Vertical and Horizontal Sectorization T World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology International Journal of Electronics and Communication Engineering Vol:12, No:1, 2018 86 International Scholarly and Scientific Research & Innovation 12(1) 2018 ISNI:0000000091950263 Open Science Index, Electronics and Communication Engineering Vol:12, No:1, 2018 publications.waset.org/10008490/pdf