Broadband LFM Radar Imaging System Based on Microwave Photonic I/Q De-chirping

Abstract

We propose a novel scheme of broadband LFM radar imaging system based on microwave photonic I/Q de-chirping. In the transmitter, a broadband linear frequency modulated signal is generated by photonic frequency-doubling. In the receiver, echoes reflected from the target are simultaneously sent to a couple of modulators in two polarization states. After the bias voltage of the corresponding modulator is adjusted to introduce a 90° phase difference, photonic I/Q de-chirping reception of radar echoes is achieved. The proposed radar is capable of real-time high-resolution detection and can distinguish the target on both sides of a reference point. The range ambiguity problem caused by image interference in current radar with photonic de-chirping reception is solved. In this study, first, the necessity of I/Q de-chirping is demonstrated. Then, the structure and principle of the proposed photonic-based radar are introduced. A K-band radar with a bandwidth of 8 GHz is established, and an experiment on target detection and inverse synthetic aperture radar imaging is conducted. Results show that the system can effectively suppress the interference from image frequencies.

Keywords

• Microwave photonics
• Microwave photonic radar
• Linear frequency modulated signal
• I/Q receiver