Instantaneous frequency measurement system using optical mixing in highly nonlinear fiber

Abstract

A broadband photonic instantaneous frequency measurement system utilizing four-wave mixing in highly nonlinear fiber is demonstrated. This new approach is highly stable and does not require any high-speed electronics or photodetectors. A first principles model accurately predicts the system response. Frequency measurement responses from 1 to 40 GHz are demonstrated and simple reconfiguration allows the system to operate over multiple bands.

Simultaneous Multi-Channel Microwave Photonic Signal Processing

“…In this paper, we considered RFSA based on XPM as the nonlinear optical effect. FWM is another nonlinear optical effect that has been used to perform IFM for microwave sensing applications [49][50][51]. Simultaneous wavelength conversion of two optical signals based on FWM has been demonstrated using the MSND [41].…”

Instantaneous microwave frequency measurement using four-wave mixing in a chalcogenide chip

“…These applications would greatly benefit from the development of IFM systems capable of extremely high frequency (EHF) band operation, as can be realized by optical processing of microwave signals [2]. Indeed, there have been numerous proposals for implementing high-bandwidth microwave IFM systems using optical components [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18].…”

“…One particular IFM approach with no inherent measurement bandwidth limitation relies on nonlinear optical mixing to generate an idler whose power is dependent on the frequency of the input radio frequency (RF) signal [3]. The key feature of this alloptical implementation is that the only electronics it requires is a low-cost DC photodetector.…”

“…We perform IFM over a 40 GHz measurement bandwidth, limited by the equipment used, which is a record for an on-chip device. Moreover, we alter the structure of the previous FWM-based IFM system [3] to enable ultra-fast reconfiguration of the measurement resolution, and demonstrate frequency estimation with low 0.74 GHz root mean squared (rms) error.…”

Photonics-enabled sub-Nyquist radio frequency sensing based on temporal channelization and compressive sensing

“…Photonically assisted techniques for RF spectrum measurement have shown superior performance over their electronic counterpart, due to the distinct advantages such as large bandwidth, low loss, low cost, and immunity to electromagnetic interference. Many solutions have been proposed for photonic RF spectrum sensing in the past a few years, including those based on microwave/optical power monitoring [2,3], channelization [4][5][6], and time-delay based phase discrimination [7,8].…”