Frequency-swept Light Research Articles

Broadband High-Linear FMCW Light Source Based on Spectral Stitching

The key to realizing a high-performance frequency-modulated continuous wave (FMCW) laser frequency-sweeping light source is how to extend the frequency-swept bandwidth and eliminate the effect of nonlinearity. To solve these issues, this paper designs a broadband high-linear FMCW frequency-sweeping light source system based on the combination of fixed temperature control and digital optoelectronic phase-locked loop (PLL), which controls the temperatures of the two lasers separately and attempts to achieve the coarse spectral stitching based on a time-division multiplexing scheme. Furthermore, we uses the PLL to correct the frequency error more specifically after the coarse stitching, which achieves the spectrum fine stitching and, meanwhile, realizes the nonlinearity correction. The experimental results show that our scheme can successfully achieve bandwidth expansion and nonlinearity correction, and the sweeping bandwidth is twice as much as that of the original single laser. The full-width half-maximum (FWHM) of the FMCW output is reduced from 150 kHz to 6.1 kHz, which exhibits excellent nonlinear correction performance. The relative error of the FMCW ranging system based on this frequency-swept light source is also reduced from 1.628% to 0.673%. Therefore, our frequency-swept light source with excellent performance has a promising application in the FMCW laser ranging system.

Optical parametric-assist frequency modulation for FMCW Lidar enabling double-range velocity measurement

Frequency-modulated continuous waves (FMCW) Lidar functioned as simultaneous measurement of velocity and distance has shown promising prospects in many applications. Direct modulation on semiconductor lasers is a common approach to achieve linear optical frequency scanning in FMCW Lidar for the simple configuration and easy implementation. However, the directly-modulated laser used to suffer from the limited scanning bandwidth, resulting in poor range resolution and limited velocity measurement range of FMCW Lidar. In particular, the issue becomes critical in the case of high velocity measurement over short distance. Here, we propose an optical parametric-assist frequency modulation (OPAFM) method to improve the velocity and distance measurement of FMCW Lidar simultaneously. Firstly, a chirp rate doubled idler light is generated via the four-wave mixing of a frequency-swept pump with a continuous-wave signal. The idler light then serves as a linear frequency swept laser source in the FMCW Lidar to double the range of velocity measurement and improve ranging resolution. We experimentally demonstrated the chirp rate improvement of frequency-swept light from 80.75 MHz/μs to 163.75 MHz/μs. To apply the idler light to the FMCW Lidar, the maximum measurable velocity can be doubled from 2.13 m/s to 4.41 m/s for a target at 5.2 m. Moreover, ranging measurement with improved resolution of 117 mm is also achieved, compared to the 234 mm ranging resolution by using the traditional FMCW Lidar solely. The maximum range can reach 41.54 m. The precision of velocity and distance measurement are 0.1 m/s and 3.5 cm, respectively. The method provides a promising solution to enhance the velocity and distance measurement of FMCW Lidar, enabling diverse applications in sensing and mapping.

Ultrafast and High-Precision Time Delay Measurement Based on Complementary Frequency-Swept Light and Frequency-Shifted Dechirping

Ultrafast and High-Precision Time Delay Measurement Based on Complementary Frequency-Swept Light and Frequency-Shifted Dechirping

Simultaneous frequency and bandwidth doubling linearly chirped waveform generation based on cascaded phase modulator and dual-output dual-parallel Mach-Zehnder modulator

An approach to generate the linearly chirped microwave waveform with simultaneous frequency and bandwidth doubling by using cascaded phase modulator and dual-output dual-parallel Mach-Zehnder modulator (DO-DPMZM) is proposed. The lightwave emitted from a laser diode is firstly modulated by a splitting parabolic signal to realize a symmetric-triangle linear frequency sweeping light. The frequency sweeping light is then sent to a DO-DPMZM driving by a radio frequency (RF) signal. By properly setting the direct current biases of two sub-modulators, single sideband modulation is realized at each output of the DO-DPMZM. By introducing a time delay in one branch of the modulator’s outputs, a linearly chirped microwave waveform with both frequency and bandwidth doubling can be generated after optical-to-electrical conversion. The central frequency and bandwidth of the generated waveform can be easily adjusted by tuning the frequency of the RF signal and electrical coding signal of the arbitrary waveform generator. The linearly chirped microwave waveforms with bandwidth of 10 GHz and central frequency of 30 GHz or bandwidth of 12 GHz and central frequency of 40 GHz are numerically generated. Due to the simple structure and flexible tunability, the proposal may find applications in future high resolution radar systems.

High-Resolution FMCW Reflectometry Using a Single-Mode Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Laser

High-resolution frequency-modulated continuous-wave (FMCW) reflectometry is realized by using a single-mode vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) as a frequency-swept light source for the first time. The optical frequency of the VCSEL is swept by the injection current modulation. The experimental spatial resolution of 250 μm was achieved, which is the best value when an injection current tuned laser diode is used as a frequency-swept light source.

Ultra-high-speed optical coherence tomography with a stretched pulse supercontinuum source

We introduce a new high-speed Fourier-domain optical coherence tomography (FD-OCT) scheme based on a stretched pulse supercontinuum source. A wide-band short pulse of a supercontinuum source of which output spectrum spanned a wavelength range from 1,200 nm to 1,550 nm was stretched to a long pulse of 70-ns duration by using a dispersive fiber due to the group-velocity dispersion, and it was used directly as frequency-swept light for FD-OCT. The OCT spectral interferogram was acquired in the time domain and converted into the spectral domain by the pre-calibrated time-to-wavelength relation. Using this stretched-pulse OCT (SP-OCT) scheme, we have demonstrated an ultrahigh-speed axial-line scanning rate of 5 MHz. The axial resolution of 8 microm was achieved without re-calibration of the sweep characteristic owing to the passive nature of the frequency-sweeping mechanism.