How many simultaneous beams can a 5G antenna have?

5G NR
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1

Hello Guys,

I’d like to get help with a question about 5G antenna. How many simultaneous beams can a commercial panel antenna used in the gNB to cover a sector or a cell?
Normally, we work with sub-arrays to carry out this type of simultaneous multiple coverage, I understand that we are not going to merge all the elements to generate a single super-directive beam, in short, adaptive as it may be, right?
The big question is to try to understand that the antenna panel is capable of, at any time, issuing X number of simultaneous beams to cover the users in that region. So, for each type of these commercial antenna, how many beams can they actually emit simultaneously?
Perhaps, we can understand that we can have a maximum of eight simultaneous beams, per vertical plane. And then it will be cool, because even these eight beams, will not have the same effect as a single antenna that had a very high gain in all directions.

Best Regards!

3

I posted an answer and I thought that’s not correct so I delete it. The maximum number of simultaneous beams is 8 because the NR specification allows for up to 8 transmission layers. But I always thought it also has some thing to do with the number of antenna ports. Now I’m confused. Would like to hear other experts’ opinions:)

4

I am confused as well…
I know at radio level a single ofdm symbol can have say 100 PRBs for 20MHz case in same time. So potentially 100 UEs may be waiting for their beam at same time with 100 beams radiated one beam to each UE.
The alternative is to have a subset of beams such as 10 and sweep around for full 100… just my thoughts