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High-capacity photonic beamforming for phased antennas

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KEYWORDS: Massive MIMO, Phased array antenna, Beamforming, Photonic beamforming, Commercial off the shelf (COTS) devices
SUMMARY:
Phased array antennas are suitable for massive MIMO wireless communications, of which 5G and satellite communications are paradigmatic examples. These 3 patent families propose a photonic beamforming system that is able to process a large number of RF signals with a very broad bandwidth, something that cannot be done with digital processors. The proposed photonic beamformer is thus a key enabler for broadband massive MIMO wireless communications.
TRL:
4
Technology built over one decade of R&D efforts, which started in 2010.
The technology continues to be developed currently targeting thousands of antenna elements and tens of output signals.

Background and description

Digital beamforming for massive MIMO involves signal processing rates of Tb/s to Pb/s, which is extremely challenging. Today’s most powerful digital beamformer chipset, Satixfy’s PRIME, is limited to an instanta-neous bandwidth of 1 GHz, meaning that it can output a 1GHz-wide signal from up to 32 antenna elements.
Here we propose two innovative techniques which have been widely investigated in the context of the FP7 project BEACON (www.space-beacon.eu), resulting in the first-ever real-time demonstration of a photonic processor handling 1Gb/s QPSK signals at 28 GHz, and a demonstration of two beams, totaling 2 Gb/s. Such demonstration was published in Nature Communications. As a result, the proposed system is currently the state-of-the-art technology in photonic beamforming.
The first patent family (PCT/PT2010/000061) targets photonic beamforming for a phased array antenna transmitter and features many important techniques, such as wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) and true-time delay (TTD) beamforming.
The second patent family (PCT/IB2016/052206) complements the first as it targets photonic beamforming for a phased array antenna receiver. It features new significant techniques, such as self-coherent (self-heterodyne) detection, hybrid optical/RF signal combining, WDM and TTD beamforming with a shared delay time.
The third patent family (PCT/IB2020/061433) further generalized the previous two to fully harnessing WDM, in particular by disclosing that beamforming can be done by resorting to a single tunable optical delay line.
This technology was awarded with the Altice Innovation Award in Academia, 2018 as well as the Fraunhofer Portugal Challenge 2019 for PhD.

Applications

  • Very high throughput satellites (VHTSs)
  • On-ground satellite communications
  • 5G communications

Benefits

  • Processing of a large number of RF signals: large bandwidth, low latency, low power consumption and reduced size, due to RF signals being converted to light.
  • Based solely in COTS devices, and well-known technologies, such as WDM.
  • Modular and scalable
  • Compatible with hybrid beamforming: optical/digital

Inventors

Patents

  • M. V. Drummond, R.N. Nogueira, R. Oliveira, Microwave photonic signal processor, PCT/IB2020/061433, PCT, 23-12-2019,
    | Abstract
  • M. V. Drummond, R.N. Nogueira, Photonic beamforming system for a phased array antenna receiver, CN2016800033515, National, Granted, 20-04-2015, China,
    | Abstract
  • M. V. Drummond, R.N. Nogueira, V. C. Duarte, Photonic beamforming system for a phased array antenna receiver, US15520424, National, Granted, 20-04-2015, United States,
    | Abstract
  • M. V. Drummond, R.N. Nogueira, V. C. Duarte, Photonic beamforming system for a phased array antenna receiver, EP16723164, EPO, Granted, 20-04-2015,
    | Abstract
  • M. V. Drummond, R.N. Nogueira, V. C. Duarte, Photonic beamforming system for a phased array antenna receiver, PCT/IB2016/052206, PCT, 20-04-2015,
    | Abstract
  • M. V. Drummond, R.N. Nogueira, Photonic system and method for tunable beamforming of the electric field radiated by a phased array antenna, CN201080068628, National, Granted, 08-07-2010, China,
    | Abstract
  • M. V. Drummond, R.N. Nogueira, Photonic system and method for tunable beamforming of the electric field radiated by a phased array antenna, US13808995, National, Granted, 08-07-2010, United States,
    | Abstract
  • M. V. Drummond, R.N. Nogueira, Photonic system and method for tunable beamforming of the electric field radiated by a phased array antenna, EP10809198, EPO, Granted, 08-07-2010,
    | Abstract
  • M. V. Drummond, R.N. Nogueira, Photonic system and method for tunable beamforming of the electric field radiated by a phased array antenna, PCT/PT2010/000061, PCT, 08-07-2010,
    | Abstract

    • Publications

  • V. C. Duarte, J. Prata, C. Ribeiro, R.N. Nogueira, G WINZER, L. Zimmermann Zimmermann, R. Walker, S CLEMENTS, M. Filipowicz, M. Napierala, T. Nasilowski, J. Crabb, M. Kechagias, L. Stampoulidis Stampoulidis, J ANZALCHI, M. V. Drummond, Modular coherent photonic-aided payload receiver for communications satellites, Nature Communications, Vol. 10, No. 1, pp. 1 - 9, April, 2019,
    | Abstract     | BibTex

    • REFERENCE: PI-0104, PI-0105, PI-1001

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