Photonic wideband beamformer for multibeam arrays

A new multibeam feed system has been developed which will significantly reduce the complexity of the beamformer by eliminating multiple sets of discrete phase shifters, drivers, multiplexers, and control lines at the array element level. The feed "engine" can be used for both transmit and receive operations. On receive, the signal across the aperture is conjugatedly matched at the front end by the phase gradient produced by the transmit network. The received signal does not go through the entire manifold in the reverse direction, which ensures that the system noise figure is not degraded by losses in the receive path. The technique can be extended to 2-D scan.