Photonic true time delay beamforming technique with ultra-fast beam scanning

A photonic-based true time delay (TTD) phased array antenna (PAA) with ultra-fast angle scan is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. A tunable TTD is realized using a wavelength-swept laser and an array of dispersive elements. The key novelty of our work is the ultra-fast angle scan using an ultra-fast wavelength-swept laser source, which is constructed by a gated multi-wavelength laser (MWL) and a dispersion compensation fiber (DCF). In our experiments, a wavelength-sweep time between two adjacent wavelengths is only several nanoseconds for wavelength spacing of 2.4, and 3.2 nm. We successfully realized an ultra-fast angle scan from 0 to 43° with a step of 8.8° in 12.48 ns.