Photonic approaches for processing high frequency microwave signals

The ability of photonic signal processing to process wide bandwidth signals and to allow direct processing of high-frequency signals that are already in the optical domain, opens up new possibilities for the realization of high-performance wide-band processing of signals to overcome the inherent bottlenecks caused by limited sampling speeds in conventional electrical signal processors. Microwave photonic processors based on liquid crystal on silicon techniques provide versatile solutions in wideband signal processing and high frequency beamforming, which address the challenges of single RF passband response, dispersion induced RF distortion elimination and photonic controlled phased array beamforming.