A fibre Bragg grating based scanning receiver for electronic warfare applications

An all-optical scanning receiver system for Electronic Warfare (EW) applications has been demonstrated. The system employs wavelength scanning of optically modulated RF sidebands through the narrow bandwidth central transmission peak of a phase-shifted fibre Bragg grating. High-speed wavelength scanning may be employed via current modulation of a semiconductor diode laser. The all-optical nature of this system allows for a lightweight fibre optic implementation that is simple to fabricate and employs low-speed electronic processing at the system output. The system exhibits a sensitivity of 73 dBm and a frequency resolution of 50 MHz over a 20 GHz bandwidth.