Full-Duplex Antenna Design and Applications
Summary
Full-duplex antenna systems enable simultaneous transmission and reception on the same frequency channel, offering a route to double spectral efficiency in wireless networks. At the core of this concept lies the challenge of self-interference, which arises when a transmitter’s power leaks into its co-located receiver. Research has focused on structural decoupling, passive suppression and active cancellation techniques. Structural decoupling employs novel geometries such as dielectric resonator arrays or planar differential feeds to isolate transmit and receive paths. Passive suppression may exploit spatial diversity, absorptive materials or surface perturbations to confine fields, while active cancellation uses tailored feed networks, hybrid couplers and signal processing to remove residual interference. Recent advances span sub-6 GHz communications for private 5G and V2X through to millimetre-wave backhaul links and embrace both single-element architectures for compact terminals and phased-array configurations for beam steering. The integration of self-interference cancellation in the antenna domain is critical for next-generation full-duplex MIMO, satellite and vehicular applications, promising higher data rates, reduced latency and more efficient spectrum use.
Research from Nature Portfolio
Recent studies have demonstrated a circularly polarised monostatic dielectric resonator antenna composed of two orthogonally oriented anisotropic resonators with alternating permittivity layers. By incorporating a central absorber and optimising element spacing, these designs achieve in-band full-duplex operation with transmit/receive isolation exceeding 50 dB across a 5.87–5.97 GHz band, while delivering peak gains above 5 dBic. This approach highlights the potential of anisotropic materials and resonator engineering to deliver compact, high-isolation solutions for portable and infrastructure hardware.
Full-Duplex Antenna Design and Applications publication trend
The graph below shows the total number of articles in full-duplex antenna design and applications across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).
Technical terms
In-band full-duplex (IBFD): Simultaneous transmission and reception on the same frequency band.
Self-interference (SI): Undesired coupling of transmit signals into the co-located receive path.
Self-interference cancellation (SIC): Techniques combining passive suppression and active network methods to reduce SI to acceptable levels.
Dielectric resonator antenna (DRA): A radiating element based on a dielectric resonator that supports low-loss, high-efficiency radiation.
Circular polarisation (CP): An antenna radiation characteristic in which the electric field vector rotates in a circle, providing robust link performance and isolation benefits.
Hybrid coupler: A network that splits and recombines signals with defined amplitude and phase relationships for interference cancellation.
References
- High isolation circularly polarized in-band full-duplex anisotropic dielectric resonator antenna. Scientific Reports (2023).
- Antenna/Propagation Domain Self-Interference Cancellation (SIC) for In-Band Full-Duplex Wireless Communication Systems. Sensors (2022).
- Improving Isolation in Monostatic Simultaneous Transmit and Receive Systems Using a Quasi-Symmetrical Self-Interference Cancellation Architecture. IEEE Journal of Microwaves (2022).
- A Simultaneously Transmit and Receive Antenna Terminal for In‐Band Full‐Duplex Applications. International Journal of RF and Microwave Computer-Aided Engineering (2024).
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