Work

Monolithically integrated photonic beamforming for a phased array receiver antenna

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: We present, to the best of our knowledge, the first monolithically integrated RF-in/IF-out photonic beamformer for a phased-array receiver antenna, fabricated on an $8\times 4~\text {mm}^2$ Indium Phosphide die. The beamformer is designed to receive four input RF signals and one RF local oscillator, convert them to the optical domain, apply complex weighting, and down-convert the added signals to a beamformed IF output. The presented photonic beamformer is enabled by a novel laser generation stage requiring no isolation, injection locking, or optical filtering. A conversion loss of 79 dB was measured, primarily dominated by lossy passive devices. Despite the significant conversion loss, beamforming was demonstrated for three beam orientations, $0^\circ$ and $\pm 30^\circ$ , for $f_{\text {RF}}=10$ GHz, $f_{\text {LO}}=14$ GHz and $f_{\text {IF}}=4$ GHz, using three out of four designed channels, and considering a virtual linear phased array antenna receiver.

Source: Scientific Reports

DOI: 10.1038/s41598-026-74578-1