Microwave photonic multiform microwave frequency shift keying signal generator.

Abstract

A photonic approach to realizing multiform microwave frequency shift keying (FSK) signal generation is proposed and demonstrated. In the scheme, a commercial dual-polarization quadrature phase shift keying modulator (DP-QPSKM) is employed to generate two orthogonally-polarized signals containing specific optical sidebands, and a subsequent Sagnac loop structure govern the interference results of these two signals. From a theoretical analysis, when the modulators are properly biased, microwave FSK signal with fixed double relationship or flexibly tunable subcarrier frequencies can be obtained, and high frequency multiplication can be realized in the meantime. Furthermore, a photonic-optimized coherent demodulation structure is designed to recover the binary coding data, which can effectively avoid the electronic bottleneck. Simulation has been performed to investigate the mechanism and the discussions about the robustness to non-ideal parameters including DC bias, phase shift and polarization angle are also given. In the proof-of-concept experiment, microwave FSK signal with subcarrier frequencies of 2/4, 2.2/3.8, 2.4/3.6, 2.6/3.4, 2.8/3.2 GHz are generated, and the correct binary coding data is successfully recovered with the aid of simulation platform. The simulation and experimental results can verify the feasibility of the proposed multiform microwave FSK signal generator, which may find applications in modern radar and communication systems.