Photonic generation of W-band arbitrary waveforms with high time-bandwidth products enabling 39  mm range resolution

Abstract

Ultrabroadband millimeter-wave and subterahertz waveforms offer significant potential, from ultrahighspeed communications to high-resolution radar. Electronic generation of broadband arbitrary waveforms at these frequencies suffers from limited digital-to-analog converter speed and high timing jitter. Photonicassisted techniques, such as those based on optical shaping and frequency-to-time mapping, can overcome these difficulties. Nevertheless, previous photonic arbitrary waveform generation demonstrations are confined to microwave and low millimeter-wave frequencies due to limited optical-to-electrical conversion bandwidth. Here, by utilizing cutting-edge photodetector technology, we report the first generation, wireless transmission, and measurement of substantially complex and highly stable arbitrary waveforms in the W-band (75-110 GHz). These waveforms exhibit high time-bandwidth products up to 600, arbitrarily extendable repetition periods, and phase-noise performance substantially better than state-of-the-art electronic arbitrary waveform generators. The utility of the generated waveforms is demonstrated in multi-target ranging, where a depth resolution of 3.9 mm, unprecedented in the W-band, is achieved over more than 5 m.

Recent Advances in Programmable Photonic-Assisted Ultrabroadband Radio-Frequency Arbitrary Waveform Generation

“…Plotted in Figs. 8(c)-8(e) are measurements of a generated down-chirp waveform with ~15 ns time aperture and frequency content from 70 to 110 GHz, for a TBWP of ~600 [60]. To our knowledge the latter experiments are the first to demonstrate RF-AWG covering the full W-band, a frequency region of interest for various broadband applications, such as ultrahigh-speed wireless communications, high-resolution ranging, electromagnetic imaging, and high-speed tomography.…”

“…To our knowledge the latter experiments are the first to demonstrate RF-AWG covering the full W-band, a frequency region of interest for various broadband applications, such as ultrahigh-speed wireless communications, high-resolution ranging, electromagnetic imaging, and high-speed tomography. In section III-B, we will discuss high-resolution ranging experiments performed using such high TBWP W-band waveforms [60]. The passband nature of the setup sketched in Fig.…”

“…temporal duration of the generated waveform to achieve finer Doppler resolution [78]. Later we successfully extended Costas sequence generation to the W-band (75-110 GHz) [60]. A down-conversion measurement of the generated waveform is shown in Fig.…”

“…11(a)[59]. (c) Time-domain down-conversion measurement of W-band Costas sequence with 90 GHz center frequency and 1 GHz frequency increment (in blue) and corresponding instantaneous frequency (in red)[60].…”

Photonic-Assisted Error-Free Wireless Communication With Multipath Precompensation Covering 2–18 GHz

“…Electrical AWG offers long record length but restricted RF bandwidth due to speed limitations in digital-to-analogue conversion. In contrast, radio-frequency arbitrary waveform generation (RF-AWG) based on photonic techniques, especially those utilizing optical pulse shaping [15] and frequency-to-time mapping [16], [17], have experimentally demonstrated tens of GHz of RF bandwidth at center frequencies up to ∼100 GHz [18], [19]. In addition, its inherent compatibility with radio-over-fiber technology considerably reduces signal power loss during wired distribution [9].…”