Optical functions for microwave signal processing in radar, communications and surveillance systems

The optical-microwave technologies have appeared as promising for the next generations of radar, communications and surveillance systems. The new concepts and demonstrations show the improvements of optoelectronic links and the capability to perform processing functions, in the optical domain, like the local oscillator distribution for both ground/ship based and airborne radars, or the radar receive mode processing with optical architecture dedicated to radar beamforming and to down/frequency mixing.