Abstract: A four-element wideband photonic DF system with robust symmetrical number system preprocessing utilizes dual electrode Mach-Zehnder modulators (DE-MZMs) to conduct phase detection for direct wideband direction finding (DF) of RF signals, such as microwave signals, in which the normalized magnitude of the output signal phase detector circuit is equal to |sin(?/2)| where ? is the phase difference between the plane waves arriving at the reference and measurement antennas of a linear DF array. The method and system allow fine angular resolution using a much smaller array size than is typically required for linear arrays employing super-resolution signal processing techniques.

Abstract: Embodiments in accordance with the invention allow for direct digitization of wideband RF signals without the need for down conversion or the use of mixers. In one embodiment, a preprocessed input analog signal is applied to three wideband Mach-Zehnder interferometers (MZI), e.g., modulators, to amplitude modulate a continuous wave laser signal. A photodetector is used at the output of each interferometer to convert the amplitude modulated optical signal into an electrical signal. This is followed by an amplifier and a low-pass filter (LPF) to increase the signal level and to reduce the noise. A small mi comparator bank at the output of each LPF is clocked at the sampling frequency and encodes the electrical signal from each detector into a thermometer code that represents an integer value within the modulus. A field programmable gate array (FPGA) then combines the thermometer-code from each comparator bank in order to generate a more convenient 6-bit binary representation, i.e., a digital output.