Incoherent Photonic Processing for Chirped Microwave Pulse Generation

Abstract

We propose and experimentally demonstrate a fully reconfigurable generator of chirped microwave pulses based on the processing of an incoherent optical signal by means of a dispersive element with a non-uniform optical spectral shaping. The system performance has been proven by the generation of different chirped microwave pulses. Different capabilities of the system have been experimentally demonstrated as frequency tunability and time-bandwidth product control by means of the dispersive element and optical source power distribution. Furthermore, the possibility for generating chirped microwave pulses with positive and negative chirp characteristic has been shown achieving similar chirps in terms of magnitude but opposite sign. For it, the chirp characteristic is introduced by proper shaping of the optical source signal power distribution.