Radio links are traditionally required to be manually directed towards each other in order to communicate, which limits data to be transferred between two specific nodes only, creating a so-called “Point-to-Point” communication. Steerable antennas, on the other hand, enable radio links to be automatically aligned towards each other, resulting in an increased ease-of-use and enabling “Point-to-Multi-Point” communication and development of “mesh networks”. Steerable antennas also enable a directed connection to individual users, which increases the data transfer rate from mobile devices to base stations. Steerable antennas are expected to be a key component in the development of 5G.
Consumer use of mobile data is growing exponentially, and is expected to increase by 10 times during the next five years. This rapid increase of data use and connected units is challenging the world’s mobile data networks to their limits. Technologies used for 2G, 3G, 4G will not be enough. To increase the data capacity further, the network providers will need to increase the number of base stations and increase the operating frequency.
