Fiber-distributed ultra-wideband radar network based on wavelength reusing transceivers

• Published in: Optics express 2018-07, Vol.26 (14), p.18457-18469
• Main Authors: Fu, Jianbin, Zhang, Fangzheng, Zhu, Dan, Pan, Shilong
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 1094-4087; 1094-4087
• DOI: 10.1364/OE.26.018457

A fiber-distributed ultra-wideband (UWB) radar network based on wavelength-reusing transceivers is proposed and demonstrated. In the proposed system, wavelength-division multiplexing technology is applied to connect a central unit (CU) and several spatially separated transceivers. The optically generated UWB pulses in different transceivers are designed to have different polarities or shapes, so the CU can easily identify which transceiver the echo UWB pulse is emitted from. By applying the wavelength reusing, the wavelength of the uplink UWB pulse can also be used by the CU to identify which transceiver it is received by. Therefore, with very simple cooperative signal processing in the CU, the information of the target in the radar detection area can be extracted. In addition, because the fiber lengths in the network are known, clock synchronization in the transceivers is not required, which simplifies further the entire system. In an experiment, 2-D localization with localization accuracy of about one centimeter is achieved using the proposed radar network with two distributed transceivers.