Range demonstration of a reconfigurable fiber-optic time-steered 2D transmit beamformer

Abstract

We present the first range demonstration of a 2-D, true-time delay, transmit beamformer based on the technique that produces 2-D steering by dynamically reassigning the output of a 1-D beamformer onto the input plane of a 2-D antenna array. Anechoic chamber testing of the reconfigurable beamformer, demonstrates squint-free steering to /spl plusmn/45/spl deg/ across the 6 to 18 GHz band in the azimuth and elevation directions and to (/spl plusmn/30/spl deg/ az, /spl plusmn/30/spl deg/ el) in the inter-cardinal /spl plusmn/45/spl deg/ directions.