RF-Photonic Spatial-Spectral Channelizing Receiver

As mobile beam-bandwidth-product requirements accelerate, millimeter-wave (mmW) bands have been opened to telecommunications networks enable wider channel bandwidths, while Massive Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (mMIMO) technology has implemented concurrently address multiple devices at the same frequency from a single base station. Such space-division multiplexing can be combined with spectral very large number of concurrent users, but currently is through computationally intensive digital beamforming networks. We show that radio-frequency (RF) photonic receiver system, previously shown capable sorting signals into respective spatial-spectral ‘bins’ further capable, an injection-locked tunable optical local oscillator (TOLO), recovering data upon each signal in RF scene. The TOLO free-space up-converted sideband and field impinges array photodetectors, corresponding separate points k-space, defined by unique combinations angle-of-arrival (AoA) carrier frequency. Using this LO insertion, we demonstrate simultaneous recovery spatially co-located streams resilience interference.