Advances in three dimensional reversible photonic modules for phased array control

Novel three dimensional multichannel high speed N-bit switched grey-scale optical amplitude and phase control modules are described. These modules rely on high speed binary on/off optical switches arranged in serial cascaded architectures with preset optical attenuation and/or phase settings provided by relatively slow speed but programmable optical devices and passive polarization optics. Modules have both collinear in-line and non-collinear symmetrical optical designs to improve optical signal stability and minimize optical path difference delays, respectively. These modules can be used for analog microwave and millimeter wave signal processing applications such as array antenna beam steering, beam nulling and adaptive beamforming operations.