Microwave Photonics for Modern Radar Systems

The emerging new concepts and technologies based on microwave photonics have led to an ever-increasing interest in developing innovative radar systems with a net gain in functionality, bandwidth/resolution, size, mass, complexity and cost when compared with the traditional implementations. This paper describes the techniques de- veloped in the last few years in microwave photonics that might revolutionize the way to design multifunction radar systems, with an emphasis on the recent advances in optoelectronic oscillators （OEOs）, arbitrary waveform gener- ation, photonic mixing, phase coding, filtering, beamforming, analog-to-digital conversion, and stable radio-fre- quency signal transfer. Challenges in implementation of these components and subsystems for meeting the technique requirements of the multifunction radar applications are discussed.     

基于微波光子技术的实时高分辨雷达成像

为克服传统雷达面临的带宽瓶颈,提升其分辨率,利用微波光子倍频与混频技术对宽带雷达信号进行处理,构建宽带雷达,成功实现了实时高分辨雷达成像。构建的微波光子雷达样机带宽高达12 GHz,实现逆合成孔径雷达成像的二维分辨率优于2 cm×2 cm,成像速率高达100帧/s。在该雷达架构基础上构建了多输入多输出微波光子雷达,在相同的相参累积时间内,能进一步提高雷达成像的方位向分辨率。研究结果表明:微波光子技术是突破传统雷达频率与带宽限制的有效手段,有望在未来实时高分辨雷达探测与成像中发挥重要作用。