Recent Advances and Future Directions of Microwave Photonic Radars: A Review

Microwave photonic (MWP) radar has the advantages of generating and processing wide bandwidth microwave signals, reconfigurability, high immunity to electromagnetic interference compared to microwave electronic radar. It has the potential to be used in applications such as intelligent autonomous and cyber-physical systems. Recent advances in microwave photonic technology led to the generation, fast processing, and control of broadband signals. Because of the advancements in photonic technologies, next-generation microwave photonic radar is becoming more prominent. This article reviews the most recent advancements and future directions in MWP radars. This review article overviews the different components of microwave photonic radar, different design challenges, and issues pertaining to it. We present a comparative study of different MWP radars on different applications. It also discusses possible future research directions of MWP radar.