Microwave photonic radar system with ultra-flexible frequency-domain tunability

Abstract

Both effective detection demand against diversified development of flight targets and remote sensing providing identifiable and fine target information all call for microwave radar system with flexible and ultra-wideband frequency-domain ability to provide more high-resolution and multi-source information. A microwave photonic radar system with theoretically full-band and ultra-wideband working ability is presented and experimentally demonstrated. An optical frequency operation module is employed in the transmitter to break the frequency-domain limitation on the emitted radar signal, while two types of optical mixing structures are switched to provide the ability to receive target echoes at any frequency band. In the experiments, high-SNR optical frequency operation and subsequent waveform generation at each normal radar band, that is from HF to Ka, are carried out. Good linearity and coherence of the generated waveforms are also demonstrated. Then, multi-band system-level detection experiments are completed to show the full-band working ability. Centimeter-scale or even sub-centimeter-scale resolution are realized at different bands, which identifies the proposed system can handle target detection with flexible performance and support acquiring rich target information at different frequency bands in future.