Microwave Photonics solutions for military systems

Since 90´s microwave French MoD has supported the evaluation of photonic solutions for military systems at research level. In the same time, Telecommunication market mainly drove fibered laser and photo detector development. The goal is firstly to evaluate these telecommunication components for military applications in terms of performances and robustness, and also to plan on specific developments for applications not covered by these Telecom components. First application field was RF optic links between distant points in military systems. The benefits are in terms of weight, EM immunity, communication capacity. Another area of interest field under study is for array antenna and beam forming: photonic solutions allow wide RF bandwidth system. The objective of this paper is to present an overview of the studies sustained by French MoD and to give the future trends from DGA point of view