Fiber-optic control of a time-steered millimeter-wave transmit array

Abstract

An ultrawideband, fiber-optic, true time-delay, millimeter-wave array transmitter is demonstrated. The beamformer is based on dispersive-prism, optical-delay lines and exhibits squint-free /spl plusmn/60/spl deg/ steering in azimuth across the entire Ka (26.5 to 40 GHz) microwave band. This is believed to be the first fully functioning demonstration of a photonically controlled wideband, millimeter-wave transmitter system.