Developing an integrated photonic system with a simple beamforming architecture for phased-array antennas

摘要

We have designed a simplified true-time-delay beamforming architecture using integrated photonics for phasedarray antennas. This architecture can independently control multiple RF beams simultaneously with only a single tuning parameter to steer the beam in each direction for each beam. We have made a proof-of-the-principle demonstration of an X-band, 30 x 4-elements, fiber-optics-based beamformer for one-dimensional steering in transmission mode. The goal is to develop a semiconductor-based integrated photonic circuit so that a 2D beamforming array for both transmit and receive operations can be made on a single chip. For that, we have designed a Si-based integrated waveguide circuit using two types of "slow-light" waveguide for tunable time delays for two-dimensional steering. (C) 2016 Optical Society of America