Abstract: A monolithic antenna structure, comprising: a first metal layer; a second metal layer; a third metal layer arranged as a ground plane; a first dielectric layer between the first metal layer and the second metal layer; a second dielectric layer between the second metal layer and the third metal layer; a via feeding a signal for transmission by the antenna structure through the second dielectric layer to the second metal layer; wherein the first metal layer and the second metal layer are not electrically connected; and wherein the first metal layer acts primarily as the radiating element of the monolithic antenna structure.

Abstract: A RU for mMIMO has M antenna branches; a plurality of partial digital beamforming (PDBF) processors, each PDBF processor receiving a transmit vector comprising values for each of L data layers to be transmitted at time t from the RU via the antenna branches, wherein each of the plurality of PDBF processors performs a beamforming operation on the vector by multiplying the vector with each of a plurality of respective weight vectors that are a subset of a received weight array, to produce scalar values, each scalar value corresponding to one of the weight vectors and being supplied to a respective antenna branch; wherein the number of scalar values produced by any particular one of the PDBF processors equals the number of weight vectors used in each PDBF processor and the number of scalar values produced is equal to M; where L and M are greater than one.