Optically controlled serially fed phased array sensor

A new type of RF-photonic sensor design which uses an optical serially fed phased array is proposed for applications in radar and communication systems. This sensor has the advantages of true time delay and yet only requires one tunable laser and one fiber optic grating delay for beam steering. In addition to discussing the system operation in transmit and receive modes, we also present initial experiments establishing the viability of the basic serial-feed design approach.