Multi-Beam Microwave Photonic Beamforming Based on Self-Coherent Detection of a WDM Signal

The increasing ubiquity of mobile services is driving wireless communications to fully exploit spatial-division multiplexing (SDM). However, SDM's key enabling technology - the beamformer - is hindered by scalability hurdles that electronic technologies have failed to overcome. This manuscript...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of lightwave technology 2022-08, Vol.40 (15), p.4956-4963
Main Authors: Oliveira, Rui, Nogueira, Rogerio N., Drummond, Miguel V.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Amplitude modulation
Beamforming
Computer architecture
Microwave photonics
Optical communication
Optical filters
Optical modulation
Optical receivers
photonic beamforming
Photonics
Radio frequency
Wavelength division multiplexing
wavelength-selective switch
Wireless communications
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Summary:The increasing ubiquity of mobile services is driving wireless communications to fully exploit spatial-division multiplexing (SDM). However, SDM's key enabling technology - the beamformer - is hindered by scalability hurdles that electronic technologies have failed to overcome. This manuscript tackles this challenge by introducing a novel photonic beamforming architecture, which leverages and combines key techniques of both past photonic beamformers and cutting-edge optical communications. The proposed architecture makes use of wavelength-division multiplexing, coherent detection, and programmable photonic processing to realize a truly scalable photonic beamformer. The proposed architecture is analytically and numerically validated, as well as experimentally demonstrated. The experimental validation includes a practical demonstration of two RF beams at 12 \,\mathrm{G}\mathrm{Hz}, each carrying a 1 GBd QPSK signal, being independently beamformed, and down-converted to 5 \,\mathrm{G}\mathrm{Hz}.
ISSN:0733-8724
1558-2213
DOI:10.1109/JLT.2022.3171222