A photonics-based radar with generation and de-chirp processing of broadband linear frequency modulated continuous-wave (LFMCW) signal in optical domain is proposed for high-resolution and real-time inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR) imaging. In the proposed system, a broadband LFMCW signal is generated by a photonic frequency quadrupler based on a single integrated electro-optical modulator, and the echoes reflected from the targets are de-chirped to a low frequency signal by a microwave photonic frequency mixer. The proposed radar can operate at a high frequency with a large bandwidth, and thus achieve an ultra-high range resolution for ISAR imaging. Thanks to the wideband photonic de-chirp technique, the radar receiver could apply low-speed analog-to-digital conversion and mature digital signal processing, which makes real-time ISAR imaging possible. A K-band photonics-based radar with an instantaneous bandwidth of 8 GHz (18-26 GHz) is established and its performance for ISAR imaging is experimentally investigated. Results show that a recorded two-dimensional imaging resolution of ~2 cm × ~2 cm is achieved with a sampling rate of 100 MSa/s in the receiver. Besides, fast ISAR imaging with 100 frames per second is verified. The proposed radar is an effective solution to overcome the limitations on operation bandwidth and processing speed of current radar imaging technologies, which may enable applications where high-resolution and real-time radar imaging is required.
A novel microwave photonic phase shifter based on a single-sideband (SSB) polarization modulator (PolM) and a polarizer is proposed and demonstrated. In the SSB-PolM, two SSB intensity-modulated signals with a phase difference of π along two orthogonal polarization directions are generated. With the polarizer to combine the two signals, the phase of the optical microwave signal can be tuned from -180 to 180 deg by simply adjusting the polarization direction of the polarizer, whereas the amplitude keeps unchanged. An experiment is carried out. A full-range tunable phase shift in the frequency range of 11-43 GHz is achieved. The flat power response, power independent operation, and high stability of the proposed microwave photonic phase shifter is also confirmed.
A novel wavelength-switchable single-longitudinal-mode (SLM) dual-wavelength erbium-doped fiber laser (EDFL) implemented based on a sigma architecture that is composed of a ring loop and a linear standing wave arm is experimentally demonstrated. Gain competition that prevents stable dual-wavelength oscillation is effectively suppressed by placing the gain medium in the standing-wave arm and by introducing polarization hole burning (PHB) via polarization multiplexing of the two lasing wavelengths in the ring loop. The SLM operation is guaranteed by an ultranarrow Fabry- Perot filter (FPF) introduced by absorption saturation in an unpumped erbium-doped fiber (EDF) and the gain saturation in the gain medium. In addition, the ring cavity forms a Lyot filter for each wavelength. Thus, wavelength switching is achieved by simply adjusting the polarization state of either wavelength. By beating the two SLM wavelengths at a photodetector (PD), a microwave signal with a frequency tunable from approximately 10 to approximately 50 GHz is experimentally generated.
A novel scheme for implementing high-performance optical single-sideband (OSSB) modulation based on a dual-drive Mach-Zehnder modulator (MZM) and a 120°hybrid coupler is proposed and demonstrated. A RF signal is divided by the 120°h ybrid coupler into two parts with equal powers and a phase difference of 120°, and then, led to the two RF ports of the dual-drive MZM. With a proper dc bias, an OSSB signal with the −1st and +2nd-order sidebands (or the +1st and −2nd-order sidebands) suppressed is generated. A numerical simulation and a proof-ofconcept experiment are carried out. As compared with the conventional OSSB modulation based on a 90°hybrid coupler, the suppression of the +2nd (or −2nd)-order sideband improves evidently the performance when the OSSB modulation is applied in a radio-over-fiber system or an optical vector network analyzer.Index Terms-Microwave photonics, optical single-sideband (OSSB) modulation, optical vector network analysis, radio-overfiber (RoF).
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