Impact Statement:In this paper we present and demonstrate an ultra-fast beam steering scheme based on microwave photonics processing. The steering settling time is only limited by the spe...Show More
Abstract:
In this paper, we demonstrate ultra-fast millimeter wave beam steering with settling times below 50 ps. A phased array antenna with two elements is employed to realize be...Show MoreMetadata
Impact Statement:
In this paper we present and demonstrate an ultra-fast beam steering scheme based on microwave photonics processing. The steering settling time is only limited by the speed of the phase modulator involve in the process and is as low as 100 ps. Such ultra-fast steering capabilities can be used for various applications in communication and sensing. As a proof-of-concept experiment, we have implemented a millimeter wave radio access network that performed symbol-by-symbol steering at 10 GBd. Our scheme not only enable longer reach thanks to beam forming but also reduces the costs and the power consumption of the mobile users by performing a time-to-space mapping of the transmitted symbols. In fact, the users only received the signal from their assigned time slots. Thanks to the cost and complexity reduction of the users, such a scheme may help to resolve the challenges posed in the successful implementation of millimeter wave radio access network.
Abstract:
In this paper, we demonstrate ultra-fast millimeter wave beam steering with settling times below 50 ps. A phased array antenna with two elements is employed to realize beam steering. The phased array feeder is implemented with a recently introduced time delay line that provides, at the same time, an ultra-fast tunability, broadband operation, and continuous tuning. Our implementation is used to perform symbol-by-symbol steering. In our demonstration, the beam direction is switched between two sequentially transmitted symbols toward two receivers placed 30° apart. We show the successful symbol-by-symbol steering for data streams as fast as 10 GBd. The suggested scheme shows that the ultra-fast beam steering is becoming practical and might ultimately enable novel high bit-rate multiple access schemes.
Published in: IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics ( Volume: 52, Issue: 1, January 2016)