A high-resolution compact optical true-time delay beamformer using fiber Bragg grating and highly dispersive fiber

• Optical true-time delay (OTTD) beamformer with high resolution of 1 ps.
• OTTD beamformer constructed by fiber Bragg grating and highly dispersive fiber.
• OTTD beamformer with compact structure and light weight.
• Theoretical analysis, numerical simulations and experimental demonstrations.

A high resolution optical true-time delay (OTTD) beamformer constructed by fiber Bragg grating (FBG) and highly dispersive fiber (HDF) is presented. It can produce the true time delay with the resolution of 1 ps. Besides the proposed system has compact structure and light weight even when a large number of antenna elements are present in a practical antenna array, this is because the used FBG fibers and HDFs are short and independent of the antenna element number. Theoretical analysis and numerical simulations are made. Proof-of-concept experiment results that demonstrate the feasibility of the system are presented.