Beamforming Using Linear Antenna Arrays for Photonic Applications

Wireless communications systems including point-to-point, broadcast satellite communication, mobile and radar, suffer from several constraints mainly fading, interference and attenuation caused by very long distance. In order to meet the continuous requirements of 5G applications, the antenna arrays are extensively used in order to meet these challenges for efficient communication. Phased array antennas rely on providing phase shift to each antenna element using electronic phase shifters. These phase shifters depend on their turn on delaying RF signal by a specified amount. The bandwidth and noise limitation of such signals require multiple phase shifters for different frequencies. This technique is also suitable for photonic applications. Recent introduction of microwave photonics made it possible to obtain phase delay in a very wide bandwidth. The phase array antenna is a set of two or more antennas in which the signal from each array is combined or processed to achieve maximum and enhanced performance better than that of a single antenna. That phased array is not only used to optimize the signal interference and the arrival direction of the received signal, but also to steer the array angle and to achieve maximum gain, directivity and interference cancellation from a particular direction, and thus the overall directivity. Furthermore, this arrangement provided MIMO reception. In this paper, there is an investigation of the uniform linear array antenna and its equivalent radiation pattern is presented. Variable phases, number elements of array factor and the angle between array elements are analyzed in term of their key performances indicator such as a high directivity and beam-width.