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Adaptive Optics: Analysis and Methods/Computational Optical Sensing and Imaging/Information Photonics/Signal Recovery and Synthesis Topical Meetings on CD-ROM

High-Bandwidth, Unity Probability-of-Intercept RF Spectrum Analyzer based on Spectral Hole Burning

Max Colice, Friso Schlottau, Kelvin H. Wagner

Published Jan 1, 2005• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We perform 20-GHz spectrum analysis with unity probability-of-intercept by burning holes into a spectral-hole-burning crystal with an RF-modulated laser and probing the altered absorption profile with a chirped laser.
DOI
10.1364/ip.2005.iwa4

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We present experimental results for what is to our knowledge the first spectral-hole-burning based rf spectrum analyzer to cover 10 GHz of rf analysis bandwidth. The rf signal of interest is modulated onto an optical carrier, and the resultant optical sidebands are burned into the inhomogeneously broadened absorption band of a Tm3+:YAG crystal. At the same time a second, frequency-swept laser reads out the absorption profile, which is a double-sideband replica of the rf spectrum, and thus the rf spectrum can be deduced after spectral calibration of the nonlinear readout chirp. This initial demonstration shows spectral analysis covering 10 GHz of bandwidth with >5500 spectral channels and provides 43 dB of dynamic range.
We demonstrate an RF spectrum analyzer based on spectral-hole burning (SHB) that operates with unity probability of intercept and resolution under 100 kHz. An SHB crystal, which consists of rare-earth ions doped into a crystal host, records the power spectrum of an RF signal modulated onto an optical carrier as a series of spectral holes that persist for about 10 ms. While the crystal's homogeneous and inhomogeneous linewidths place the fundamental limits on resolution and bandwidth, respectively, the practical limits depend on the lasers used to interrogate the record stored in the crystal's absorption profile. Up to now, SHB spectrum analyzers have used chirped beams from externally modulated, stabilized lasers, which have linewidths of under 10 kHz but cannot chirp over much more than octave bandwidths, or directly modulated diode lasers, which can chirp over more than 20GHz but have linewidths of about 1 MHz. Switching to chirped fiber lasers, which have natural linewidths of under 2 kHz and chirping linewidths on the order of 10 kHz, produces a measurement with fine resolution without any laser stabilization. In addition, by chirping the fiber laser with a sufficiently fast piezo, the resulting chirp could extend over tens of gigahertz in under 10 ms, yielding both fine resolution and broad bandwidth without extraordinary stabilization schemes.
We propose a novel, wideband spectrum analyzer based on spectral hole burning (SHB) technology. SHB crystals contain rare earth ions doped into a host lattice, and are cooled to cryogenic temperatures to allow sub-MHz hole burning linewidths. The signal spectrum is recorded in an SHB crystal by illuminating the crystal with an optical beam modulated by the RF signal of interest. The signal's spectral components excite those rare earth ions whose resonance frequencies coincide with the spectral component frequencies, engraving the RF spectrum into the crystal's absorption profile. Probing this altered absorption profile with a low power, chirped laser while measuring the transmitted intensity results in a time-domain readout of the accumulated RF signal spectrum. The resolution of the spectrum analyzer is limited only by the homogeneous linewidth of the rare earth ions (< 1 MHz when the SHB crystal is cooled to cryogenic temperatures). The spectrum analyzer bandwidth is limited by the inhomogeneous linewidth and by the electro-optic modulator bandwidth, both of which can be > 20 GHz.
We demonstrate the first 10-GHz instantaneous bandwidth radio-frequency spectrum analyzer based on spectral hole burning in Tm/sup 3+/:YAG. It exhibits 10 000 frequency channels and a resolution better than 1 MHz. Thanks to the fast and linear chirping capabilities of the laser used, it has a potential 100% probability of interception and a response time in the millisecond range. Its linear dynamic range of 16 dB is presently essentially limited by the modest amount of optical power available and can be further improved.