UWB fastly-tunable 0.5-50 GHz RF transmitter based on integrated photonics

Abstract

In the last decade, the interest in software-defined ultra-wideband (UWB) and tunable radio frequency (RF) apparatuses with low size, weight, and power consumption (SWaP), has grown dramatically, pushed by the new 6G vision where, RF equipment shall enable a large number of fundamental applications as UWB communications, robot localization mapping and control and high precision radars, all of them contributing in revolutionizing our life style. Unfortunately, the coexistence of ultra-wideband and software-defined operation, tunability and low SWaP represents a big issue in the current RF technologies. In this article, to the best of our knowledge, the first example of a complete tunable software-defined RF transmitter with low footprint (i.e. on photonic chip) is presented exceeding the state-of-the-art for the extremely large tunability range of 0.5-50 GHz without any parallelization of narrower-band components and with fast tuning (<200micros). This first implementation, represents a breakthrough in microwave photonics.

Ultrahigh Dynamic Range and Low Noise Figure Programmable Integrated Microwave Photonic Filter

“…To play a key role in real RF applications, integrated MWP circuits need to simultaneously show advanced programmability and exceptional performance in terms of losses, noise figure, and dynamic range in a reduced footprint [3][4][5][6][7]. In recent pasts, a number of integrated MWP functions have widely been demonstrated, such as for filtering [8][9][10][11][12], phase shifting [13][14][15][16][17], delay line [18][19][20][21], waveform generator [22][23][24][25][26][27] and beamforming [28][29][30][31]. Typically, these functions were achieved in dedicated, or application specific circuits, and the measured RF metrics were only sparsely reported.…”