Low-Bandwidth Photonics-Assisted Receiver for Broad-Bandwidth Wireless Signals

Abstract

This paper introduces a photonics-assisted receiver that enables the reception of high-bandwidth wireless signals with low-bandwidth electronics. The receiver down-converts the input signal into parallel low-bandwidth sub-signals, employing photonics-based orthogonal sampling. This sampling is based on a multiplication and not switching, so, it does not introduce additional aperture jitter. Therefore, the photonics-assisted analog-to-digital converter (ADC) converts the wireless signal with a higher signal-to-noise-and-distortion ratio (SINAD), which improves the Q-factor for the detection. This Q-factor improvement is especially high, when the orthogonal sampling is carried out with low-jitter oscillators. Compared to the direct detection with 30 GHz, the simulation demonstrates a 2.2 dB Q-factor enhancement for the detection of a 30 GHz signal, with 10 GHz electronics. The same improvement is revealed in the experiment for the detection of 12 GHz signals with 4 GHz electronics.

Photonics-assisted high-bandwidth, high spectral efficiency signal aggregation from low-bandwidth components and lower spectral efficient signals

“…The simplest sinc pulse sequence is just a single sinusoidal radio frequency (RF) with a constant direct current (DC) offset, or bias [14]. To achieve orthogonality, the sinc pulse sequences in the branches need to be time shifted with respect to each other [15], [16]. This can be achieved by adjusting the phase change of the RF by Δ𝜙 = 360ᵒ/3 = 120ᵒ between the branches.…”