The base station antenna may have been a workhorse in the background in the past, with excitement centering on the baseband, but in pre-5G architectures it is becoming the star of the show. Massive MIMO and active antennas will be essential to many of the networks envisaged by the vendors and the trailblazing operators, and there is a huge amount of innovation going on in this area, by the large OEMs and by antenna specialists like Kathrein or CommScope. At last, it seems, active antenna units (AAUs), so long heralded as a revolutionary force in networks, will have their day in the sun. At its Mobile Broadband Forum in Tokyo last week, Huawei was focusing heavily on its AAU offering,…