A silicon integrated microwave photonic beamformer

作     者：Zhu, Chen Lu, Liangjun Shan, Wensheng Xu, Weihan Zhou, Gangqiang Zhou, Linjie Chen, Jianping 

作者机构：State Key Laboratory of Advanced Optical Communication Systems and Networks Shanghai Institute for Advanced Communication and Data China Science Department of Electronic Engineering Shanghai Jiao Tong University Shanghai200240 China 

出 版 物：《arXiv》 (arXiv)

年 卷 期：2020年

核心收录：

主　　题：Antenna phased arrays 

摘      要：Optical beamforming networks (OBFNs) based on optical true time delay lines (OTTDLs) are well-known as the promising candidate to solve the bandwidth limitation of traditional electronic phased array antennas (PAAs) due to beam squinting. Here we report the first monolithic 1×8 microwave photonic beamformer based on switchable OTTDLs on the silicon-on-insulator platform. The chip consists of a modulator, an eight-channel OBFN, and 8 photodetectors, which includes hundreds of active and passive components in total. It has a wide operating bandwidth from 8 to 18 GHz, which is almost two orders larger than that of electronic PAAs. The beam can be steered to 31 distinguishable angles in the range of -75.51° to 75.64° based on the beam pattern calculation with the measured RF response. The response time for beam steering is 56 μs. These results represent a significant step towards the realization of integrated microwave photonic beamformers that can satisfy compact size and low power consumption requirements for the future radar and wireless communication systems. © 2020 Optical Society of America Copyright © 2020, The Authors. All rights reserved.