Abstract
We experimentally demonstrate, for the first time, a chirped microwave pulses generator based on the processing of an incoherent optical signal by means of a nonlinear dispersive element. Different capabilities have been demonstrated such as the control of the time-bandwidth product and the frequency tuning increasing the flexibility of the generated waveform compared to coherent techniques. Moreover, the use of differential detection improves considerably the limitation over the signal-to-noise ratio related to incoherent processing.
Highlights
Photonic generation of microwave/millimeter-wave signals has been a field of interest in the last years due to its important impact on applications such as radar systems, wireless communications, medical image processing, software defined radio or modern instrumentation where high frequency and large bandwidth signals are required [1, 2]
The use of microwave photonics (MWP) technology in microwave signal generation offers new features and improved performance related to the inherent advantages of operating in the optical domain such as low losses, high bandwidth, immunity to electromagnetic interference (EMI) and, especially in this case, the possibility of tuning and reconfiguration [3, 4]
In order to overcome this lack of flexibility, we recently proposed a photonic scheme which theoretically permits to increase the chirped waveform flexibility compared with coherent techniques by means of incoherent processing using a nonlinear dispersive element [19]
Summary
Photonic generation of microwave/millimeter-wave signals has been a field of interest in the last years due to its important impact on applications such as radar systems, wireless communications, medical image processing, software defined radio or modern instrumentation where high frequency and large bandwidth signals are required [1, 2]. This is the key point which permits to obtain high values of SNR simplifying the averaging process needed when a system operates in incoherent regime [20] In this way, the second term provides the instantaneous frequency ωrf=2πfrf of the generated pulse which can be written as (Eq (9) of [19]): frf ( t ) =. The use of larger fiber lengths and wider optical sources leads to a totally different operation regime in order to strategically exploit the dispersion slope β3 in the waveform generation In this way, the condition assumed in Eq (2) is satisfied for all the cases shown through this paper. This manuscript corresponds to the first-ever experimental demonstration of the chirped waveform generation by means of the incoherent optical processing by nonlinear dispersive elements
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