Photonics develops new radars

A grant from the European Research Council (ERC) is enabling the development of the next generation of digital radars using photonics.

Dr Antonella Bogoni, a researcher at CNIT, Parma, Italy, received a Proof of Concept Grant from the ERC and announced a new series of tests on the photonic radar. The team have found that by exploiting light to generate and detect radio frequency signals they can develop digital radars with a much higher performance than existing ones.

The research team will test the photonic radar by monitoring the air traffic of the neighbouring Pisa International Airport. The detected data will be re-elaborated by the photonic radar developed by the Pisa research group and compared with the data simultaneously communicated during the flight, in order to verify the level of precision of the device.

Dr Bogoni said: “I am happy to say that the first photonic radar now exists. Its performances are in line with what we all expected. The radar offers benefits, which we discovered during the research. We are now ready for field tests and hope that our results can be the basis for a new generation of multifunctional and safer radar.”

A laser producing ultra-short light pulses (ten billion times shorter than one second) will be used for the test. The laser will allow the generation of very high quality radar signals at higher and more flexible frequencies, even under bad weather conditions. The radar can also carry out different operations simultaneously as it can monitor the environment by controlling the air and the land traffic while enabling communication between the airport workers. Bogoni believes that accidents due to congested air traffic will significantly decrease in the near future.

The team will use their ERC grant to design a prototype and explore business opportunities.

You can view a video on the project here.