Photonic system and method for tunable beamforming of the electric field radiated by a phased array antenna
First Claim
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1. A photonic system to perform tunable beamforming of an electric field radiated by a phased array antenna, the system comprising:
- at least one monochromatic light source,an electro-optic modulator, anda 1 to N optical signal splitter, wherein each of N outputs of the 1 to N optical signal splitter is optically connected to at least one Mach-Zehnder delay interferometer, a photodetector and one of N elementary antennas that compose the phased array antenna.
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Abstract
This invention discloses a photonic system to beamform the electric field yield by a phased array antenna. The system function relies on a photonic tunable delay line, which consists on 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, wherein one of them just uses a single delay line and a single monochromatic light source, independently of the quantity of the array elementary antennas.
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10 Claims
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1. A photonic system to perform tunable beamforming of an electric field radiated by a phased array antenna, the system comprising:
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at least one monochromatic light source, an electro-optic modulator, and a 1 to N optical signal splitter, wherein each of N outputs of the 1 to N optical signal splitter is optically connected to at least one Mach-Zehnder delay interferometer, a photodetector and one of N elementary antennas that compose the phased array antenna. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5)
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6. A method to perform beamforming of an electric field radiated by a phased array antenna,
wherein at least one monochromatic light source is modulated by an RF signal, which is radiated using an electro-optic modulator; - and
wherein the at least one modulated signal is copied N times, where each copy is processed by at least one Mach-Zehnder delay interferometer with a tunable coupling ratio, being next converted to an electric domain through photodetection, and being then sent to the respective elementary antenna of the phased array antenna;
throughout controlling the interferometers coupling ratio, the time delay associated to each one of the N copies is varied, and therefore the beamforming of the electric field radiated by the phased array antenna is controlled. - View Dependent Claims (7, 8, 9, 10)
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Specification