Radar & sensor technology Light Instead of Copper: The Rise of Photonic Radar

Related Vendors

Fastems Systems GmbH

item Industrietechnik GmbH

Radar has traditionally been an electronic technology. Antennas collect radio-frequency signals, coaxial cables move them, analogue front ends condition them and processors turn echoes into tracks. Silicon photonics is beginning to change that architecture. By moving part of the signal transport into the optical domain, radar designers can separate antennas from central electronics, distribute apertures across a platform and reduce the penalties of long RF cable runs. The result is not “optical radar” in the lidar sense. It is microwave radar whose internal nervous system increasingly uses light.

Photonic radar architectures combine conventional microwave sensing with optical signal transport. Fibre links can connect distributed RF sensor nodes to central processing, opening new possibilities for conformal and distributed military radar systems.