Impact of group delay ripples of chirped fiber grating on optical beamforming networks

The impact of group delay ripples of chirped fiber gratings (CFG) on the performance of optical beamforming networks (OBFN) is investigated. The paper theoretically analyzes the quantified relations among the amplitude and period of CFG, the optical angle frequency interval at the inter-element arrays and the beampointing shift. The wavelength instability of the optical source is also investigated. This instability-induced phase jitter of RF signal has been verified experimentally. The theoretical models are proposed to analyze the performance of CFG-based OBFN systems.