Microwave Photonic Dual-Beam Transmit-Receive Shared Beamforming System
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摘要: 针对传统相控阵雷达在宽带宽角扫描下存在的波束偏移问题,提出了一种基于微波光子的双波束收发共用波束合成系统。该系统采用同一套硬件资源进行收发共用,并基于色散延时和波分复用技术实现了同时双波束扫描。研制了微波光子双波束收发共用波束合成原理样机并进行了8通道波束扫描验证,在15 GHz~26 GHz频率范围内实现了±52°的收发分时和双波束扫描,不存在波束偏移现象,在提高资源利用率的同时提高了波束扩展性。Abstract:
Objective Traditional phased array radar suffers from beam squint during wide-band and wide-angle scanning, a problem that severely constrains the scanning accuracy, real-time performance, and reliability of the radar system, thereby compromising its practical application effectiveness in demanding scenarios such as military reconnaissance, aerospace, and intelligent transportation systems. In military contexts in particular, this limitation makes it difficult for existing radar systems to meet the requirements of modern combat and surveillance for high precision and wide coverage. In view of this, there is an urgent need to develop an innovative beamforming mechanism to overcome the limitations of traditional approaches in terms of hardware resource redundancy, scanning flexibility, and anti-jamming capability. Therefore, a microwave photonic dual-beam transceiver-shared beamforming system is proposed in this paper. By optimizing the hardware architecture and incorporating dispersive delay and wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) techniques, this system achieves simultaneous dual-beam scanning without beam squint, thereby providing critical theoretical support and a technical pathway for enhancing the overall performance of radar systems. Methods The microwave photonic dual-beam transceiver-shared beamforming system consists of three parts: the radio frequency (RF) front-end, the optically controlled beamforming network, and the broadband antenna. In this system, the optically controlled beamforming network adopts a dispersion-based time-delay method, in which two optical signals with different central wavelengths can generate two distinct time delays within the same dispersive medium. Therefore, based on the WDM approach, by properly setting the initial wavelength values and adjusting the wavelengths of two tunable lasers at equal intervals, two sets of independent proportional delays can be obtained, thereby enabling independent control of two beams. Furthermore, by rationally designing the architecture of the receiving, transmitting, and transceiver modules within the RF front-end, and employing strategies such as duplexing and time-division switching, transceiver sharing can be achieved using the same system. Finally, a broadband Vivaldi antenna is employed for the reception and radiation of wide-spectrum signals. In the future, the number of beams can be expanded by increasing the number of optical sources and RF front-end modules. Results and Discussions The microwave photonic dual-beam transceiver-shared beamforming system enables time-division multiplexing of dual-channel transmitting and receiving beamforming based on a single set of hardware. A 2×8 transceiver-shared platform is constructed for experimental validation. Experimental results demonstrate that the system achieves independent dual-beam spatial scanning without beam squint over a frequency range of 15 GHz to 26 GHz, with a scanning coverage of ±52°. In the transmitting state, when Beam 1 operates at a frequency of 22 GHz, the main-to-sidelobe suppression ratio of the radiation pattern is approximately 13 dB for beam steering directions of ±52°, ±30°, and ±4° ( Fig. 11 ). In the transmitting state, when Beam 1 and Beam 2 operate at frequencies of 15 GHz and 26 GHz, respectively, the radiation pattern at a steering direction of 35° exhibits no beam squint (Fig. 12 ), demonstrating wideband operation capability. In the receiving state, with the operating frequencies of Beam 1 and Beam 2 unchanged, the radiation pattern at a steering direction of –42° similarly shows no beam squint (Fig. 13 ).Conclusions This paper employs the same set of hardware resources to achieve dual-beam transceiver-shared beamforming based on dispersion-based delay and WDM technology, and develops a prototype system, thereby addressing the beam squint issue inherent in traditional phased array radar under wideband wide-angle scanning. Experimental results demonstrate that:(1) The optical true time delay method based on the dispersion regime offers real-time tunability, and its combination with WDM technology can effectively expand the number of delay channels;(2) The beamforming system based on optical true time delay exhibits no frequency-dependent beam squint and is capable of wideband (15 GHz–26 GHz) and wide-angle (±52°) operation;(3) The proposed optically controlled beamforming architecture enables time-division switching between transmitting and receiving modes, and dual-beam transmission or dual-beam reception scanning can be achieved through the expansion of optical sources. -
Key words:
- Microwave photonic /
- Phased array /
- Beamforming /
- Dispersion
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表 1 本方案与已报道部分方案对比
延时
体制工作模式 工作带宽
(GHz)扫描范围
(°)波束
扩展系统
复杂度集成度 成本 功耗 参考文献[7] 光开关 接收/二维 25.35~27.1 ±40 难 高 低 高 高 参考文献[8] 光开关 发射/一维 93 –51~34 难 较高 较高 较高 较高 参考文献[9] 色散光纤+光开关 接收/一维 8~12 ±45 较难 较高 低 较高 低 参考文献[11] 色散光纤+光开关 发射+接收/一维 8~12 ±30 较难 高 低 高 较高 参考文献[13] 色散光纤+光开关 接收/一维 8~12 –40~45 较难 较高 低 较高 较高 本方案 色散光纤 发射+接收/一维 15~26 ±52 易 较低 低 较低 低 -
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