Photonics-enabled Millimetre-wave Phased-Array Antenna with True Time Delay Beam-steering

We report a photonics-based two-element antenna array operating in the 50 to 120 GHz frequency range wideband emitter module, using a monolithic two-element uni-travelling carrier photodiode array coupled to a pair of high gain planar antennas. The measurements show a wide 3-dB bandwidth of 70 GHz, covering three millimetre range waveguide bands (V, E and F). Moreover, we demonstrate this emitter module as a phased- array antenna by performing photonics-enabled beam-steering. By exploiting photonic true time delay technique, beam scanning in 20° range at 70 GHz is proven with only two antenna elements. The scalable and compact module presented allows for realisation of compact RF front-end for microwave photonic systems.

I. Introduction

The millimetre wave (mm-Wave) and terahertz (THz) frequency bands provide extremely wide bandwidths to increase the capacity of future wireless communication systems. These frequency bands have received great interest for short-to- medium range multi-Gbps wireless communication links. In future cellular networks’ front/backhaul access, i.e. 5G, the RF and baseband signals can be transported over optical fibre cable to the remote antenna sites, making the network architecture fairly simple.