Microwave Photonic Exciter Unit for Radar System

TL;DR

This paper presents a microwave photonic exciter unit for radar systems that offers enhanced phase noise performance and long-term stability compared to traditional methods, utilizing optoelectronic oscillators and tunable optical components.

Contribution

It introduces a novel radar exciter design based on microwave photonics components, demonstrating improved phase noise and stability over conventional crystal-based methods.

Findings

Microwave photonic exciter achieves lower phase noise.

The design offers tunability with optical filters and laser sources.

Performance comparison shows advantages over traditional oscillators.

Abstract

Modern radar systems require low phase noise and long term phase-stable radar carrier signals for high-resolution imaging, micro-Doppler signatures applications. High stable signal generation through conventional crystal followed by frequency multiplier techniques are limited phase noise performance under vibration conditions. Optoelectronic oscillators (OEOs) offer low phase noise and long-term phase stability compared to the conventional oscillators. In this design of the Radar Exciter unit based on microwave photonics components viz., OEOs, frequency dividers, optical filters, optical delay lines, optical arbitrary waveform generators are discussed. The microwave photonics offers frequency-independent Exciter design with tunable filters and tunable laser sources. In this paper the performance comparison of microwave photonic-based exciter unit also discussed.