Acousto-Optic Parallel Channel Wideband Receiver

This paper describes the performance of a wideband acousto-optic receiver whose function is targeted towards electronic warfare receiver applications. The receiver design employs a conventional acousto-optic spectrum analyzer which is followed by a linear fiber optic array to sense the emerging light. Each fiber in the array is connected to its own photo-detector, video amplifier and threshold circuitry thus providing channelized receiver operation. The array circuitry is interfaced with a digital processor which can analyze the array output in real time. In this paper a preliminary account of receiver performance will be discussed in terms of measured sensitivity, dynamic range and frequency resolution.