Flexible Polymer Modulators for Large Conformal Antenna Arrays
Abstract
Polymer electrooptic modulators were fabricated on flexible Mylar substrates, which will serve as one of the main building blocks for the future optically-controlled antenna arrays. The fully operational devices exhibited modulation properties at W-band similar to the devices on rigid substrates and are expected to demonstrate comparable performance at other frequencies of interest. Use of Mylar substrates will allow us to commercialize modulators with integrated finline-rectangular waveguide transitions working up to 100 GHz. Other major advances have been achieved by successfully designing, fabricating, and testing photonic RF phase shifters. They consisted of two nested Mach- Zennder modulators and exhibited an RF phase shift of over 100 degrees at 16 GHz with a DC-control voltage change of 7.8 V. This project has not only demonstrated the ability of our exciting technology to fabricate complex closely placed electrooptic polymer components on flexible substrates, but also opened the entirely new way of implementing photonically-controlled phased arrays.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- May 25, 1999
- Accession Number
- ADA368349
Entities
People
- B. Tsap
- H. R. Fetterman
- L. R. Dalton
- W. H. Steier