Silica-waveguide Optical Time-Shift Network for a 96-element L-band Conformal Array

摘要

Since the first demonstration of an optical steered phased array antenna, many architectures for implementing optical beam-forming networks have been proposed and realized. Among the reported schemes, those offering true-time-delay (TTD) still has the best potential for meeting future needs in multifunction and multiband operations, especially over wide scan angles. Thus far, the photonic time-shift modules demonstrated for system insertions were all composed of fiber-based delay-lines, whose lengths were trimmed individually to meet specific time-delay requirements, as dictated by the aperture size and steering angle of the array.