Photonic beamforming system for a phased array antenna receiver
Drummond, M. V.
;
Nogueira, R.N.
;
Duarte , V. C.
Instituto de Telecomunicações
Invention Title: Photonic beamforming system for a phased array antenna receiver
Patent Nr.: US15520424
Type: Patent
Regional Coverage: National
Grant Status: Granted
Priority Date: 20-04-2015
Filing Date: 18-04-2017
Granting Date: 05-03-2019
Country: United States
Tech Offer: High-capacity photonic beamforming for phased antennas
Abstract
It is an object of the present invention a photonic system to perform beamforming of a radio signal received by a phased array antenna with N antenna elements. It provides true-time delay beamforming enabled by tunable optical delay lines (6) with a periodic frequency response. The present invention provides four key advantages: photonic RF phase shifting; highly-sensitive coherent detection with intrinsic photonic frequency downconversion; phase noise cancellation, since a frequency-shifted optical local oscillator can be derived from a same laser source (1) used to feed electro-optic modulators (5); and the possibility of only requiring a single delay line, shared amongst all tunable optical delay lines. Such set of advantages makes the proposed system extremely attractive for high-end wireless receivers, required for demanding applications such as satellite communication systems and broadband wireless signal transmission.
