With the rapid development of mobile communication technology and the explosion of data traffic, high capacity communication with high data transmission rate is urgently need-ed in densely populated areas. Since multibeam antennas are able to increase the communica-tion capacity and support a high data transmission rate, they have attracted a lot of research in-terest and have been actively investigated for base station applications. In addition, since multi-beam antennas based on Butler matrix (MABBMs) have the advantages of high gain, easy design and low profile, they are suitable for base station applications. The purposes of this paper is to provide an overview of the existing MABBMs. The specifications, principles of operation, design method and implementation of MABBMs are presented. The challenge of MABBMs for 3G/LTE/5G/B5G base station applications is discussed in the end.