Abstract
A microwave frequency measurement system based on a ring assisted Mach-Zehnder interferometer (RAMZI) with a large measurement range and high accuracy is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. By using single-sideband modulation, the microwave signal with unknown frequency is converted to an optical sideband signal, which is used to probe the two complementary output optical powers of the ring-assisted Mach-Zehnder interferometer, then a fixed frequency-to-power mapping is established by obtaining a highly linear amplitude comparison function (ACF). High-precision frequency measurement with a root mean square error (RMSE) of less than 30 MHz was achieved in a frequency range of 5.2 GHz, and relative low-precision frequency measurement with a RMSE of less than 102 MHz was achieved in a frequency range of 11 GHz. Besides, in order to break the trade-off between measurement range and measurement accuracy, a multi-band measurement method was implemented and frequency measurement range of 5∼39 GHz with RMSE lower than 37 MHz was achieved.
Highlights
Frequency measurement technology has played an irreplaceable role in modern electronic warfare (EW) applications, especially in radar systems
High-precision frequency measurement with a root mean square error (RMSE) of less than 30 MHz was achieved in a frequency range of 5.2 GHz, and relative low-precision frequency measurement with a RMSE of less than 102 MHz was achieved in a frequency range of 11 GHz
The carrier-suppressed doublesideband (CS-DSB) signal was introduced into a tunable optical band-pass filter (OBPF) (SANTEC OTF-980) to filter out the lower sideband (LSB) signal, a carrier-suppressed single-sideband (CS-SSB) signal can be obtained
Summary
Frequency measurement technology has played an irreplaceable role in modern electronic warfare (EW) applications, especially in radar systems. [37] use the integrated Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) as the optical filter chip and the carrier-suppressed doublesideband (CS-DSB) modulation was used in frequency measurements. The former approach has a measurement range of 5∼15 GHz and a RMSE lower than 200 MHz. The former approach has a measurement range of 5∼15 GHz and a RMSE lower than 200 MHz The latter has a measurement range of 4∼18 GHz and a maximum error of 1.9 GHz. In Ref. Comparing with the frequency measurement technologies using the integrated Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) and add-drop optical ring resonator (ORR), the main disadvantage of the proposed RAMZI is more tunable elements are adopted, which will induce more power consumption
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