Photonic system and method for tunable beamforming of the electric field radiated by a phased array antenna
Drummond, M. V.
;
Nogueira, R.N.
Instituto de Telecomunicações
Invention Title: Photonic system and method for tunable beamforming of the electric field radiated by a phased array antenna
Patent Nr.: PCT/PT2010/000061
Type: Patent
Regional Coverage: PCT
Priority Date: 08-07-2010
Filing Date: 09-12-2010
Tech Offer: High-capacity photonic beamforming for phased antennas
Abstract
This invention discloses a photonic system to beamform the electric field generated by a phased array antenna. The operation of the system function relies on a photonic tunable delay line, which consists of an optical Mach-Zehnder interferometer with a predefined time delay difference between arms. The time delay is tuned by adjusting the coupling ratio between the power applied to each one of the interferometer's delay lines. Three embodiments are proposed, one of which only uses a single delay line and a single monchromatic light source, independently of the quantity of the array elementary antennas.
