Investigations of Linearly Chirped Fiber Bragg Gratings for Time-Steered Array Antennas

The use of linearly chirped fiber Bragg gratings as dispersive delay line elements in optical true time-delay beamformers is investigated. Two different dispersive prism beamforming architectures are considered as is their impact on the grating specifications. Microwave double-sideband and single-sideband characterization is carried out on gratings suitable for both architectures with an emphasis on the group delay ripple of single and cascaded gratings. Results indicate that commercially available gratings are suitable for beamforming applications.