Model of an active optoelectronic switchable element for integrated photonics-based optical beamforming network

At present, the progress of microwave-band phased array antennas (PAA) is mainly associated with photonics integration of their beam former unit [1]. So-called, optical beamforming network (OBFN) allows enhancing a number of technical and technological characteristics of PAA and improving their competitive ability in global markets. One of the key elements of a modern super-wide bandwidth OFBN designed using true-time delay (TTD) approach [2] is a binary switchable chain of optical delay lines that provides the desired retarding of intensity modulated optical signals steering the amplitude-phase distribution of electromagnetic field in the aperture of PAA. Figure 1 shows the most popular example of OBFN scheme [3] based on differential architecture including electrically controlled X-type optical switches and retarding elements with multiple of T0 delay time.

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