Broadband RF imaging and spectrum analysis using spatial-spectral hole-burning in an inhomogeneously broadened absorber

Broadband RF imaging by spatial Fourier beam-forming suffers from beam-squint. The compensation of this frequency dependent beam-steering requires true-time-delay multiple beam-forming or frequency-channelized beam-forming, substantially increasing system complexity. Real-time imaging using a wide bandwidth antenna array with a large number of elements is inevitably corrupted by beam-squint and is well beyond the capability of current or projected digital approaches. In this paper, we introduce a novel microwave imaging technique by use of the spectral selectivity of inhomogeneously broadened absorber (IBA) materials, which have tens of GHz bandwidth and sub-MHz spectral resolution, allowing real-time, high resolution, beam-squint compensated, broadband RF imaging. Our imager uses a self-calibrated optical Fourier processor for beam-forming, which allows rapid imaging without massive parallel digitization or RF receivers, and generates a squinted broadband image. We correct for the beam squint by capturing independent images at each resolvable spectral frequency in a cryogenically-cooled IBA crystal and then using a chirped laser to sequentially read out each spectral image with a synchronously scanned zoom lens to compensate for the frequency dependent magnification of beam squint. Preliminary experimental results for a 1-D broadband microwave imager are presented.