Equipment for System Demonstration of Phased Array Antenna Using Polymer-Based Optical True Time Delay Module.

摘要

A novel 1-to-64 (6-bit(2.6)) optical true-time delay module that can provide linear time delays ranging from 0 to 443.03 picoseconds is presented. The total insertion loss, including the propagation loss and the 1-to-64 fan-out loss is confirmed to be less than 20 dB. The crosstalk among channels is measured to be less than - 40 dB. The polarization dependent loss among 64 fan- outs is within 0.37 dB. The bandwidth of the fully packaged module is determined to be as high as 539 GHz. This true-time delay module is employed to control an eight-element K-band phased array antenna system. Far field patterns covering 18 GHz to 26.5 GHz are measured and compared with the simulated results to verify this module's wide instantaneous bandwidth. This module can bee employed to control phased array antennas working at 5 GHz - 40 GHz.