Microwave frequency measurement based on optical phase modulation and stimulated Brillouin scattering

Abstract

A photonic technique for microwave frequency measurement based on stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) with low measurement error and large measurement range is demonstrated. In the scheme, an optical phase modulator is employed and the intensity balance between the two sidebands of the phase-modulated signal is broken by use of SBS in a fibre. The frequency measurement is achieved by detecting the existence of a microwave signal after photoelectric detection of the phase modulated signal. The measurement error is experimentally shown to be 50 MHz in a narrow measuring range of ∼1 GHz and 100 MHz in a wide range of 20 GHz.

Ultrafast and Wideband Microwave Photonic Frequency-Hopping Systems: A Review

“…In this section, we discuss and compare the principles, hopping Microwave photonics (MWP), which bridges RF signal and photonic signal processing, is capable of overcoming bottlenecks in electronics due to its large bandwidth, instantaneous response, as well as flexibility and reconfigurability [8]. Various RF signal processing tasks have been successfully demonstrated using photonic technologies [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19], such as MWP analog-to-digital converters, MWP filters, MWP arbitrary waveform generators, MWP image rejection mixer, and MWP frequency measurement, to name a few. Although microwave photonic approaches are capable of generating various types of RF signals [20], it is not trivial to use them for generating frequency-hopping signals due to the limited frequency tunability and hopping speed in the existing signal generating approaches, as well as the time required to stabilize at the desired frequency.…”