abstract: The commercial semiconductor industry is gearing up for 5G communications in the 28GHz and higher band. In order to maintain the same relative receiver sensitivity, a larger number of antenna elements are required; the larger number of antenna elements is, in turn, driving semiconductor development. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a new method of dividing wireless communication protocols (such as the 802.11a/b/g/n and cellular UMTS MAC protocols) across multiple unreliable communication links using a new link layer communication model in concert with a smart antenna aperture design referred to as Vector Antenna. A vector antenna is a ‘smart’ antenna system and as any smart antenna aperture, the design inherently requires unique microwave component performance as well as Digital Signal Processing (DSP) capabilities. This performance and these capabilities are further enhanced with a patented wireless protocol stack capability. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Electrical Engineering 2019