Microwave photonics is an emerging interdisciplinary area that investigates the deep interactions between microwaves and light waves for efficient generation, distribution, processing, control, and sensing of microwave, millimeter-wave, and terahertz signals. This book outlines the potential for microwave photonics in radar and electronic warfare systems, covering basic concepts and functions, comparing performance with conventional systems, describing its impact on digital signal processing, and exploring integration issues.


The main hardware functionalities provided by photonics in radar and EW systems are described: RF transport in optical fiber, photonics-based RF signal generation/up-conversion and analog-to-digital conversion/down-conversion, optical beamforming and optical RF filtering. The book describes the new radar and EW system architectures enabled by photonics, highlighting its potential in reducing the size, weight, power consumption and cost of the whole radar or EW systems. The book also reports new applications made possible by on-chip system implementations.


Chapters are written by global experts in radar, radar networks, electronic warfare systems and microwave photonics, who have been or are currently collaborating on these new applications of photonics at a system level, providing detailed and clear interdisciplinary information at research and industrial level for both the radar/EW and photonics communities.