McMaster University

Published purpose

This project will address key issues encountered with conventional electronic beamforming networks (BFN) used in space-based Radio-Frequency phased array antennas, popular in recent low cost, large, Low Earth Orbit (LEO) constellation projects. We will design and fabricate a photonic integrated circuit to implement an innovative BFN architecture. A higher level of integration in photonic circuits leads to smaller BFN dimensions and lower cost. It will implement also true time delay within the BFN, which eliminates frequency specific behavior of beam shaping. Large bandwidth performances will be much improved over wide scan angles for operations in LEO. The high-level of integration will be enabled by wavelength division multiplexing architectures.