This work is regarding the development of a novel antenna called optically controlled reconfigurable filtenna, which is based on the integration of a broadband printed antenna with a bandpass reconfigurable RF filter. The filter is designed by applying defected microstrip structure (DMS) technique and positioned in printed antenna feeding line in order to keep the same size of the original antenna. The filtenna bandwidth is optically reconfigurable by using two photoconductive silicon switches excited by CW laser at 808 nm. Numerical results rely on independent and switchable operational modes through the 2.4 and 5.1 GHz ISM bands, whereas measurements demonstrate two reconfigurable modes based on single-band/dual-band operation over the same frequency bands. The proposed device is validated by theoretical, numerical, and experimental results.

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An innovative and effective architecture for lidar systems is presented and experimentally demonstrated. The proposed scheme can also be easily exploited for optical communications. In particular, the system includes an innovative lidar software-defined architecture based on optically coherent detection, overcoming current drawbacks of time of flight incoherent systems. The experiments demonstrate the ability to perform long range detection resorting to the waveform compression on the continuous wave approach, obtaining a range resolution of 15 cm with a sensitivity of -95  dBm. Beside the bulk implementation, the system has been also implemented in a photonic integrated circuit using complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor-compatible silicon on insulator technology with an extremely reduced footprint of 1.5  mm×3.5  mm. The testing of the integrated device confirms the effectiveness of this proof-of-concept realization.

This work reports a dual-band radar system composed of aphotonics-based transceiver and a unique dual-band antenna. The proposed antenna consists of an integration of conventional focal-point and Cassegrain parabolic antennas in the same structure, ensured by using a subreflector based on a frequency selective surface. Numerical and experimental results in terms of the antenna reflection coefficient, radiation pattern and gain are reported with excellent agreement over both frequency ranges. The innovative dual-band photonics-based radar transceiver operates simultaneously in the Sand X-bands. The radar system has been properlyvalidated by multiple detections of helicopters and airplanes in real conditions.

This work reports the concept and development of two mechanically frequency-tunable horn filtennas for microwave and millimeter-waves. Our design approach relies on the integration of a horn antenna with a mechanically tunable filter based on dual-post resonators. The proposed filtennas have been manufactured and experimentally characterized, by means of reflection coefficient, radiation pattern, and gain. Measurements demonstrate that both filtennas have a tuning ratio of approximately 1.37 with continuous adjustment. The first prototype operates from 2.56 to 3.50 GHz, whereas in the second one the bandwidth is from 17.4 to 24.0 GHz. In addition, the higher-frequency filtenna has been implemented in a 5.0-meter-reach indoor environment, using a 16-QAM signal at 24 GHz. The best configuration in terms of performance resulted in a root mean square error vector magnitude (EVMRMS) and antenna radiation efficiency of 3.69% and 97.0%, respectively.

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