Switched beam antenna system and hand held electronic device

A mm-wave antenna apparatus with beam steering function comprising:

• a Butler Matrix feeding network having a plurality of outputs and includes a plurality of input signals and a plurality of output signals in a power of 2 matrix combination;
• a plurality of power combiners, each power combiner having N outputs and one input configured to receive a respective output from the Butler Matrix feeding network, wherein each power combiner is configured to apply equal phase and power to a phase distributed output signal generated by the Butler Matrix feeding network and generate N processed signals;
• and
• a plurality of millimeter wave switched beam planar antenna arrays having at least 1.5 GHz of bandwidth and located on a top low loss dielectric substrate, wherein each antenna array has N elements configured to receive the N processed signals from the N outputs of each respective power combiner, and wherein each antenna array is configured to obtain direct and narrow width beams from the N processed signals combined by each of the power combiners,
• wherein the apparatus is integrated in a multi-layer printed circuit board including:
• a bottom dielectric substrate having the Butler Matrix feeding network, the plurality of power combiners, and a plurality of feeding microstrip lines, and
• a middle layer dielectric substrate between the top low loss dielectric substrate and the bottom dielectric substrate and having a ground plane with a plurality of coupling slits,
• wherein the top substrate extends beyond the size of the arrays to accommodate the Butler Matrix feeding network.