Paper
27 June 1997 Optical up-conversion for passive millimeter-wave imaging
Andrew Robert Harvey, Paul M. Blanchard, Graham M. Smith, Ken Webster, Alain H. Greenaway
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Abstract
Passive imaging at millimeter wavelengths is a constant struggle for increased sensitivity and angular resolution. Aperture synthesis is a particularly attractive technique for attacking these problems since it offers a high resolution from a given total antennas area and greater flexibility in the positioning of the antenna elements. This in turn can lead to a greater total collecting area and hence greater sensitivity than might be achievable with a single scanned antenna and with the additional benefit of electronic scanning. The high loss of millimeter-wave transmission lines means that received signals must be frequency translated to a more suitable frequency prior to transport to correlators. Although down conversion enables transmission by coaxial cables, up conversion onto optical carriers enables very low-loss optical fibers to be used for transmission and electronically programmable delay lines. In this paper we describe proof-of-principle experiments that demonstrate the application of optical up-conversion in aperture synthesis and also the direct formation of an image on a conventional optical camera from millimeter-wave signals modulated onto an optical carrier.
© (1997) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.
Andrew Robert Harvey, Paul M. Blanchard, Graham M. Smith, Ken Webster, and Alain H. Greenaway "Optical up-conversion for passive millimeter-wave imaging", Proc. SPIE 3064, Passive Millimeter-Wave Imaging Technology, (27 June 1997); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.277071
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Cited by 6 scholarly publications.
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KEYWORDS
Antennas

Optical fibers

Calibration

Modulation

Synthetic apertures

Diffraction

Modulators

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