An Up/Downstream Shared Optical Beam Forming Network for Remote Phased Array Antenna

An up/downstream shared optical beam forming network based on wavelength-swept for remote phased array antenna is presented and experimentally demonstrated. A shared optical true time delay (TTD) network minimizes the size and cost, which is made by 16 paths of variable lengths of dispersion compensation fibers splicing with single-mode fiber, and then corporate with optical circulators. The experimental results show that the proposed system provides wide bandwidth from 12 GHz to 17GHz. The main lobe is oriented from -49.3° to 45.9° and the spurious free dynamic range (SFDR) of 104.58 dB·Hz
^2/3
is achieved in this system. Besides, the optical beam forming network is not affected by external temperature interference. This structure could have applications in remote phased array antenna.