All-Dielectric Wireless Receiver

High power microwave (HPM) weapons and other sources of intense microwave power pose a growing threat to modern RF receivers. To address this problem, an all-dielectric photonic-assisted receiver is proposed and demonstrated. The device consists of a dielectric resonator antenna that concentrates and feeds the signal onto a resonant electro-optic field sensor. The absence of metal interconnects and the charge isolation provided by the optics removes the "soft spots" in a traditional receiver. In the proof-of-concept experiment, detection of C band electromagnetic signal at 7.38 GHz with a sensitivity of 4.3times10^-3 V/mldrHz^1/2 is demonstrated.