Reconfigurable Microwave Multi-Beamforming Based on Optical Switching and Distributing Network

Optical beamforming in microwave photonics is promising for supporting broadband wireless communications. However, the current optical beamforming lacks freedom because of the fixed connection between radio frequency (RF) signal and antenna elements (AEs). This manuscript tackles this challenge by proposing a dynamical optical beamforming architecture that reconfigures the antenna subarray for signal transmission depending on the number of signals to be transmitted. The proposed architecture employs an optical switching and distributing network (SDN) to realize a flexible connection between signals and AEs. An instance of the proposed architecture in photonic integrated circuits, which enables three working modes and transmits four RF signals through sixteen AEs, was presented and numerically simulated. The optical field distribution and beam pattern plots illustrated the operational principle and validated the feasibility of the proposed SDN architecture. Furthermore, the impact of the introduced architecture on the signal amplitude–phase consistency and the comparison of the proposed dynamic architecture and conventional fixe architectures are analyzed and discussed. The results indicate that the proposed architecture exhibits variable beamforming gain with lower hardware complexity.