As 5G mm-wave communication progresses toward higher frequencies to meet market demands, companies are being pushed to adopt cutting-edge technologies. Operating at these higher frequencies naturally leads to shorter wavelengths, which increases circuit density. This higher densi
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As 5G mm-wave communication progresses toward higher frequencies to meet market demands, companies are being pushed to adopt cutting-edge technologies. Operating at these higher frequencies naturally leads to shorter wavelengths, which increases circuit density. This higher density, in turn, complicates heat management. A supplementary solution involving heatsink antennas has been proposed to address this issue. Recent research from the MS3 group introduces a cost-effective, dual-functional pin-fed shorted patch antenna designed to assist with heat dissipation. Although the integration of a heatsink significantly improves thermal management, it does so at the cost of electromagnetic (EM) performance, particularly affecting radiation pattern symmetry, cross-polarization levels, and bandwidth. This work builds upon the latest research by using the aforementioned design as a benchmark, exploring further improvements and addressing the challenges introduced by the heatsink. This work presents, for the first time, the use of differential feeding to address the performance degradation caused by the heatsink. Differential feeding has been shown to enhance radiation pattern symmetry, increase gain, and improve bandwidth in certain applications. Additionally, aperture coupling is employed to further enhance the impedance bandwidth of the shorted patch. The results at the element level indicate a 90% improvement in impedance bandwidth due to aperture coupling; however, this comes with a significant degradation in the radiation pattern. By integrating aperture-coupled differential feeding, this work demonstrates symmetric radiation patterns, an improved bandwidth compared to the benchmark, and reduced cross-polarization levels. At the array level, differential feeding leads to a higher degree of coupling than pin-fed patch arrays for spacing values less than or equal to 0.6λ. Furthermore, differential feeding improves gain, reduces cross-polarization levels, and enhances radiation pattern symmetry compared to the benchmark.