Passive Cooling of mm-Wave Active Integrated 5G Base Station Antennas Using CPU Heatsinks

The challenge of cooling in mm-wave chip-integrated base station antenna arrays is addressed. Several approaches in thermal modeling of electronics are revisited and discussed. The two-resistor compact thermal model is applied to predict the junction temperatures of the beamformer chips. Thermal simulations are performed for two fabricated arrays having 16 chips (single-polarized) and 32 chips (dual-polarized). Two commercial passive CPU heatsinks with different capabilities are modeled and attached to the chips. The simulation results are validated through experiments using the temperature sensor readings. The reasons of discrepancies between the simulated and measured results are explained.