Phased Array Receive Antenna Steering System Using a Ring Resonator-Based Optical Beam Forming Network and Filter-Based Optical SSB-SC Modulation

A novel phased array receive antenna steering system is introduced. The core of this system is an optical ring resonator-hased broadband, continuously tunable optical beam forming network (OBFN). In the proposed system architecture, filter-based optical single-sideband suppressed-carrier modulation and balanced coherent optical detection are used. Such architecture has significant advantages over a straightforward architecture using optical double-sideband modulation and direct optical detection, namely relaxed bandwidth requirements on the optical modulators and detectors, reduced complexity of the OBFN chip, and enhanced dynamic range. Initial measurements on an actual 1 times 8 OBFN chip and an optical sideband filter chip arc presented. Both are realized in CMOS-compatible planar optical waveguide technology.