All-optical central-frequency-programmable and bandwidth-tailorable radar architecture

Abstract

Modern radar will be reconfigurable and programmable at multi-band central frequency with considerable bandwidth agility. We introduce an all-optical central-frequency-programmable and bandwidth-tailorable radar architecture that was newly proposed. It provides a coherent system by one mode-locked laser for both signal generation and reception. Heterodyning of two individually-filtered pre-chirped optical pulses via wavelength-to-time mapping generates a wideband linearly chirped radar signal. The working bands can be flexibly tailored with the desired bandwidth at a user-preferred carrier frequency. Radar echoes are first modulated onto the pre-chirped optical pulse, which is also used for signal generation, and then stretched in time or compressed in frequency several fold based on the time-stretch principle. Thus, digitization is facilitated without loss of detection ability.