Flat Millimeter-Wave Noise Generation by Optically Mixing Multiple Wavelength-Sliced ASE Lights

Abstract

We propose a photonic method for flat spectrum millimeter-wave (mm-wave) noise generation. Specifically, the flat spectrum mm-wave noise is obtained by slicing the broadband ASE optical spectrum into multiple Gaussian-shaped spectra with different central wavelengths, then beating in a wideband photomixer. Our simulation demonstrates that flat spectrum mm-wave noise can be generated in a very large range of frequency of F-band (90-140 GHz) and G-band (140-220 GHz). For the quantitative comparison of the quality of generated mm-wave noise, we define the relative flatness ( <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\eta$ </tex-math></inline-formula> ) as the ratio of the generated noise power fluctuation to its average power within a certain frequency range. Our experimental results show that the relative flatness of the generated mm-wave noise is as low as 0.46 (@35 ± 15 GHz).