Demonstration of a wide-band fiber-optic nulling system for array antennas

Author

Matthews, Paul J. ; Liu, Pao-Lo ; Medberry, John B. ; Franekl, M.Y. ; Esman, Ronald D.

Author_Institution

Div. of Opt. Sci., Naval Res. Lab., Washington, DC, USA

Volume

47

Issue

7

fYear

1999

fDate

7/1/1999 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

1327

Lastpage

1331

Abstract

A novel technique for forming and steering squint-free wide-band nulls in the far-field pattern of an ultrawide-band array antenna is presented. The nulling system relies upon a fiber-optic dispersive prism tapped delay-line microwave filter to generate the appropriate nulling waveform. The null-forming architecture was integrated with a wide-band fiber-optic dispersive prism true-time-delay transmit beamformer for demonstration in an anechoic chamber. Measurements show null depths of the order of 15 dB over the 4-18-GHz bandwidth of the system for various steering angles. The demonstrated architecture may be used for simultaneous wide-band beamforming, sidelobe reduction, and jammer suppression

Keywords

antenna phased arrays; antenna radiation patterns; array signal processing; delay lines; jamming; microwave antenna arrays; microwave filters; optical fibre dispersion; anechoic chamber; array antennas; far-field pattern; fiber-optic dispersive prism; jammer suppression; null depths; sidelobe reduction; squint-free wide-band nulls; steering; steering angles; tapped delay-line microwave filter; true-time-delay transmit beamformer; wide-band beamforming; wide-band fiber-optic nulling system; Anechoic chambers; Antenna arrays; Antenna measurements; Array signal processing; Bandwidth; Dispersion; Microwave filters; Microwave generation; Propagation delay; Ultra wideband antennas;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Microwave Theory and Techniques, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9480

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/22.775474

Filename

775474