Abstract: 
As the only method for all-weather and long-distance target detection and recognition, radar has been intensively studied since it was proposed, and is considered as an essential sensor for future intelligent society. In the past few decades, great efforts were devoted to improve radar’s functionality, precision, and response time, of which the key is to generate, control and process a wideband signal with a high speed. Thanks to the high frequency, large bandwidth, low loss transmission and electromagnetic immunity provided by modern photonics, implementation of the radars in the optical domain can provide better performance in terms of resolution, coverage and speed which may not be achievable using traditional, even state-of-the-art electronics. In this talk, I'll give an overview of the photonic technologies that are currently known to be attractive for radars. System architectures and their performance that may interest the radar society are emphasized. Emerging technologies in this area and possible future research directions are discussed.

Speaker Bio: 
Shilong Pan is currently a professor of Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, China. His research has focused on microwave photonics, which includes optical generation and processing of microwave signals, analog photonic links, photonic microwave measurement, and integrated microwave photonics. He has authored or co-authored over 300 papers in peer-reviewed journals.