An optically controlled phased array antenna based on single sideband polarization modulation

Abstract

A novel optically controlled phased array antenna consisting a simple optical beamforming network and an N element linear patch antenna array is proposed and demonstrated. The optical beamforming network is realized by N independent phase shifters using a shared optical single sideband (OSSB) polarization modulator together with N polarization controllers (PCs), N polarization beam splitters (PBSs) and N photodetectors (PDs). An experiment is carried out. A 4-element linear patch antenna array operating at 14 GHz and a 1 × 4 optical beamforming network (OBFN) is employed to realize the phased array antenna. The radiation patterns of the phased array antenna at -30°, 0° and 30° are achieved.

RF Engineering Meets Optoelectronics: Progress in Integrated Microwave Photonics

“…Pagani et al [80] have shown a phase shifter based on stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) providing a full 360° phase shift over a 40-GHz bandwidth with a phase-dependent insertion loss variation of only 0.5 dB. Polarization control has also been employed as an additional degree of freedom in the control of the amount of delay [81].…”

Satellite Payloads Pay Off

“…Various phase-shifter-based optical beamforming networks (OBFNs) have been reported [61]- [63]. One of the most successful of these approaches was realized based on a programmable photonic processor [62], which consisted of a two-dimensional array of liquidcrystal-on-silicon pixels that manipulated both phase and amplitude of the optical carrier and the sideband in an optical single-sideband (OSSB) signal.…”

“…The key advantages of this type of system are its scalability to form a large number of elements and its flexibility to control by software. Figure 7 shows another typical OBFN realized based on polarization modulation [63]. All the antenna elements share a single laser source and a single electro-optical modulator, making the system compact, fast, and frequency agile.…”

Photonic generation of tunable phase microwave signal using a feed-back controlled birefringent polarization rotator

“…However, the stability of the carrier frequency tends to be low since the optical frequency stability of source lasers 1 Department of Communications Engineering, National Defense Academy, 1-10-20 Hashirimizu, Yokosuka-shi, Kanagawa 239-8686, Japan a) kentsuji@nda.ac.jp is intrinsically low compared to the frequency stability of the electrical signal. Thus, some applications that need precise phase adjustment, such as directional antennas based on array antennas [15,16,17], are difficult to realize using a scheme with two laser sources. The latter type has a highly stable carrier frequency because the stability is determined by that of the RF signal generator used for modulation irrespective of the optical frequency stability.…”