REVERSIBLE TIME DELAY BEAMFORMING OPTICAL ARCHITECTURE FOR PHASED-ARRAY ANTENNAS

摘要

A phased array antenna system has optical architecture comprising free space delay units and associated spatial light modulators compatible for operation with temporally incoherent or coherent laser light to produce signals having selected time delays to actuate antenna elements of an antenna array to transmit electromagnetic radiation a t a selected beam angle from the phased array. The same optical architecture is used to process electromagnetic signals detected by the antenna array to produce an output signal for display or processing which corresponds to the radiation detected at the selected beam angle.