Abstract
Microwave switches, or Radio Frequency (RF) switches have been intensively used in microwave systems for signal routing. Compared with the fast development of microwave and wireless systems, RF switches have been underdeveloped particularly in terms of switching speed and operating bandwidth. In this paper, we propose a photonics based RF switch that is capable of switching at tens of picoseconds speed, which is hundreds of times faster than any existing RF switch technologies. The high-speed switching property is achieved with the use of a rapidly tunable microwave photonic filter with tens of gigahertz frequency tuning speed, where the tuning mechanism is based on the ultra-fast electro-optics Pockels effect. The RF switch has a wide operation bandwidth of 12 GHz and can go up to 40 GHz, depending on the bandwidth of the modulator used in the scheme. The proposed RF switch can either work as an ON/OFF switch or a two-channel switch, tens of picoseconds switching speed is experimentally observed for both type of switches.
Highlights
Microwave switches, or Radio Frequency (RF) switches have been intensively used in microwave systems for signal routing
We propose a photonics based RF switch that is capable of switching at tens of picoseconds speed, which is hundreds of times faster than any existing RF switch technologies
The high-speed switching property is achieved with the use of a rapidly tunable microwave photonic filter with tens of gigahertz frequency tuning speed, where the tuning mechanism is based on the ultra-fast electro-optics Pockels effect
Summary
The proposed MWP RF switch is achieved using the fast tunable MWP notch filter developed above to rapidly switch out different inputs by blocking an unwanted signal and passing the desired signal, based on the ultrafast electro-optics Pockels effect. The peak voltage of the control signal is set to 2.5 V such that the filter notch is tuned away from 9 GHz during the high voltage period of the square wave, allowing the input RF signal to completely pass through the RF switch. The 9-GHz input signal found at the switch output is -12 dBm during ON state and is -70 dBm during OFF state, resulting in a switch isolation of 58 dB
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