A simple photonic generation of linearly chirped microwave pulse with large time-bandwidth product and high compression ratio

Abstract

Based on the heterodyne beating between the pre-chirped optical pulse and the continuous wave (CW) light in a wideband photodetector (PD), linearly chirped microwave pulse with time duration of 3.2ns and bandwidth of 33GHz, which yields a large time-bandwidth product (TBWP) of 106 and high compression ratio of 160, is generated in our experiment. Dispersion compensation fiber (DCF) with uniform response across broad bandwidth is used for providing the original linear chirp in our method, which shows the promise to generate linearly chirped microwave pulse with bandwidth of up to THz. The flexibility of the center frequency and the stability of the time-frequency performance are demonstrated by generating different types of linearly chirped microwave pulses. The range resolution of our generated microwave pulse is also verified by off-line processing.