Photonic 2-D angle-of-arrival estimation based on an L-shaped antenna array for an early radar warning receiver.

Early radar warning is a significant step to lessen the fine scanning range of a receiver. The small size two-dimension (2-D) angle-of-arrival (AOA) estimation part with moderate accuracy and sensitivity is important for an early radar warning receiver. In our method, we specially design an L-shaped antenna array (L-sAA) and connect it with dual-polarization binary phase shift keying modulator (DP-BPSKM). The dual-sideband (DSB) modulation is performed to transfer most of the optical power to electrical, so as to increase the sensitivity. It is also possible to map the AOA information of the incoming beam to photo-detected electrical power without a high extinction ratio modulator or optical filter. During the estimation, the 2-D AOA is firstly measured, whose measurement range is 18.22°∼90° and the measurement error is lower than 1°. Then, based on the 2-D AOA estimation results, the third one is mathematically calculated to construct 3-D location of the target. Noteworthy, the amplitude comparison function (ACF) is adopted in this method to make the system response irrelative to the received signal power, which endows the system with signal power fluctuation immunity. Experimental results show that this method is capable of measuring a single-tone signal and a bandwidth signal. This structure is very concise and meets the potential of on-chip integration.