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IEEE Photonics Technology Letters

Photonic Frequency Measurement and Signal Separation for Pulsed/CW Microwave Signals

Bing Lü, Wei Pan, Xihua Zou, Bin Luo, Lianshan Yan, Xinkai Liu, Shuiying Xiang

Published Jan 15, 2013• 24 citations
Publisher

Abstract

A novel photonic approach to simultaneously implement frequency measurement and signal separation is proposed and experimentally demonstrated for pulsed and continuous-wave (CW) microwave signals. In this approach, a light wave is externally modulated with carrier suppressed by a pulsed or CW microwave signal to be measured, and then sent to two optical complementary filters to perform frequency-to-amplitude mapping. The outputs of the two filters are detected by low-speed photodetectors, low-frequency alternating currency (AC) electronic component and direct current (DC) one being generated. The carrier frequency of the pulsed microwave signal can be estimated by monitoring the power of the AC component, while the frequency of the CW microwave signal is discriminated from the power of the DC component, with the frequency measurement and the signal separation simultaneously realized. In proof-of-concept experiments, within the frequency range from 5 to 20 GHz, measurement errors less than ±0.1, ±0.11 , or ±0.13 GHz are achieved for a pulsed signal with pulse repetition frequency of 0.25, 0.5, or 1 MHz, whereas the errors less than ±0.08 GHz are derived for a CW signal.

DOI
10.1109/lpt.2013.2238920

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A novel photonic approach to simultaneously implement frequency measurement and signal separation is proposed and experimentally demonstrated for pulsed and continuous-wave (CW) microwave signals. In this approach, a light wave is externally modulated with carrier suppressed by a pulsed or CW microwave signal to be measured, and then sent to two optical complementary filters to perform frequency-to-amplitude mapping. The outputs of the two filters are detected by low-speed photodetectors, low-frequency alternating currency (AC) electronic component and direct current (DC) one being generated. The carrier frequency of the pulsed microwave signal can be estimated by monitoring the power of the AC component, while the frequency of the CW microwave signal is discriminated from the power of the DC component, with the frequency measurement and the signal separation simultaneously realized. In proof-of-concept experiments, within the frequency range from 5 to 20 GHz, measurement errors less than ±0.1, ±0.11 , or ±0.13 GHz are achieved for a pulsed signal with pulse repetition frequency of 0.25, 0.5, or 1 MHz, whereas the errors less than ±0.08 GHz are derived for a CW signal.
We report a photonic-assisted method for measuring the frequencies of a multi-tone microwave with high accuracy based on pulse identification. The unknown microwave signal and a linearly chirped signal are modulated to an optical carrier using a dual-polarization Mach–Zehnder modulator. Carrier-suppressed single-sideband modulation avoids the generation of undesired frequency components after photodetection. An electrical bandpass filter with a narrow bandwidth selects the beat signal between the unknown signal and the linearly chirped optical tone. A pulse, generated by the beat signal, can be observed using an oscilloscope (OSC). By identifying the beating pulse position, we can accurately determine the frequency of the unknown signal. The single-tone and multi-tone microwave signal ranges of 6–16 GHz and 26–36 GHz are successfully measured, respectively. The measurement errors for single-tone and multi-tone signals are both less than ±1 MHz.
A cross-referenced and deadband-free method with photonic harmonic down-conversion is proposed for microwave frequency measurement based on cascaded-four-wave-mixing (CFWM) in semiconductor optical amplifiers. The proposed method enables ultra-wide and accurate frequency measurement with low-frequency spectrum detection, and at the same time achieves deadband-free and multi-tone frequency measurement by cross-referenced frequency discrimination. For a proof of concept, microwave signal measurement is experimentally demonstrated up to the 40 GHz frequency range with an 0.2-MHz measurement error. The frequency measurement features ease of configuration by only changing the low-frequency electrical local oscillators of the CFWM-based photonic harmonic down-converter.
A filterless microwave photonic-assisted frequency measurement scheme for instant broadband RF signal measurement is proposed and analyzed. The scheme employs single-channel mapping to save signal processing time. The channelized receiver is divided into upper and lower branches, generating a non-flat optical frequency comb and achieving single-sideband modulation, respectively. Through image-rejection mixing, the powers of the beating frequencies and the optical frequency comb lines are combined to determine the signal range, and the signal frequency can be accurately calculated. Simulations demonstrate that this scheme can measure multi-frequency and linearly frequency-modulated signals within the range of 0-40 GHz. The system has been experimentally validated with a measurement error of less than 25 MHz.
With the rapid development of microwave photonics, which has expanded to numerous applications of commercial importance, eliminating the emerging bottlenecks becomes of vital importance. For example, as the main branch of microwave photonics, radio-over-fiber technology provides high bandwidth, low-loss, and long-distance propagation capability, facilitating wide applications ranging from telecommunication to wireless networks. With ultrashort pulses as the optical carrier, huge capacity is further endowed. However, the wide bandwidth of ultrashort pulses results in the severe vulnerability of high-frequency RF signals to fiber dispersion. With a time-energy entangled biphoton source as the optical carrier and combined with the single-photon detection technique, a quantum microwave photonics method is proposed and demonstrated experimentally. The results show that it not only realizes unprecedented nonlocal RF signal modulation with strong resistance to the dispersion associated with ultrashort pulse carriers but provides an alternative mechanism to effectively distill the RF signal out from the dispersion. Furthermore, the spurious-free dynamic range of both the nonlocally modulated and distilled RF signals has been significantly improved. With the ultra-weak detection and high-speed processing advantages endowed by the low-timing-jitter single-photon detection, the quantum microwave photonics method opens up new possibilities in modern communication and networks.
As the main branch of microwave photonics, radio-over-fiber technology provides high bandwidth, low-loss, and long-distance propagation capability, facilitating wide applications ranging from telecommunication to wireless networks. With ultrashort pulses as the optical carrier, a large capacity is further endowed. However, the wide bandwidth of ultrashort pulses results in the severe vulnerability of high-frequency radio frequency (RF) signals to fiber dispersion. With a time-energy entangled biphoton source as the optical carrier combined with the single-photon detection technique, a quantum microwave photonics method in radio-over-fiber systems is proposed and demonstrated experimentally. The results show that it not only realizes unprecedented nonlocal RF signal modulation with strong resistance to the dispersion but also provides an alternative mechanism to distill the RF signal out from the dispersion effectively. Furthermore, the spurious-free dynamic ranges of the nonlocally modulated and distilled RF signals have been significantly improved. With the ultra-weak detection and the high-speed processing advantages endowed by the low-timing-jitter single-photon detection, the quantum microwave photonics method opens new possibilities in modern communication and networks.
The range and speed of a moving object can be ascertained using the sensing technique known as light detection and ranging (LiDAR). It has recently been suggested that quantum LiDAR, which uses entangled states of light, can enhance the capabilities of LiDAR. Entangled pulsed light is used in prior quantum LiDAR approaches to assess both range and velocity at the same time using the pulses' time of flight and Doppler shift. The entangled pulsed light generation and detection, which are crucial for pulsed quantum LiDAR, are often inefficient. Here, we study a quantum LiDAR that operates on a frequency-modulated continuous wave (FMCW), as opposed to pulses. We first outline the design of the quantum FMCW LiDAR using entangled frequency-modulated photons in a Mach-Zehnder interferometer, and we demonstrate how it can increase accuracy and resolution for range and velocity measurements by n\sqrt{n}n​ and nnn, respectively, with nnn entangled photons. We also demonstrate that quantum FMCW LiDAR may perform simultaneous measurements of the range and velocity without the need for quantum pulsed compression, which is necessary in pulsed quantum LiDAR. Since the generation of entangled photons is the only inefficient nonlinear optical process needed, the quantum FMCW LiDAR is better suited for practical implementations. Additionally, most measurements in the quantum FMCW LiDAR can be carried out electronically by down-converting optical signal to microwave region.