1.College of Biomedical Engineering and Instrument Science, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China 2.College of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China 3.School of Electrical and Information Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, China
Fund Project:Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 61675182)
Received Date:26 January 2019
Accepted Date:10 June 2019
Available Online:01 September 2019
Published Online:05 September 2019
Abstract:Microwave waveforms, such as square waveforms, sawtooth waveforms and triangle waveforms are widely used in radar communication, electronic measurement and medical imaging and so on. Using photonic microwave technology to generate arbitrary microwave waveforms has been a research hotspot.In this paper, a photonic microwave waveform generation scheme based on dual-wavelength time domain synthesis is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. Used in this scheme mainly are two lasers, two single-drive Mach-Zehnder modulators, a wavelength division multiplexer and a tunable optical delay line. The two Mach-Zehnder modulators are respectively biased at different operating points. When two beams with different wavelengths are superimposed in the time domain, different microwave waveform outputs can be generated. Therefore, by adjusting the bias voltage and modulation depth of the modulator, the phase and amplitude of the modulated optical signal can be controlled, and finally the photonic microwave waveform is generated.At first, the generation mechanism of square waveform, sawtooth waveform and triangle waveform are analyzed, and the comparisons among ideal square waveform, sawtooth waveform, triangle waveform and their third-order waveforms are made through the simulation analysis. It is verified that third-order waveforms become close to the ideal waveforms. Since the proposed scheme produces higher-order components, and the waveforms of the first three orders are the same as the ideal waveforms, so the scheme has good waveform generation capability. And then square waveform, sawtooth waveform and triangle waveform with a repetition rate of 2.5 GHz are successfully generated experimentally. Thus, experimental results are well consistent with the theoretical analyses. In addition, the system also has good tunable characteristics. By changing the modulation frequency of the modulator, the frequency tuning of the output photonic microwave waveforms can be realized, and square waveform, sawtooth waveform and triangular waveform with a repetition rate of 5 GHz are also experimentally achieved. The repetition rate of the generated microwave waveform is mainly limited by the bandwidth of modulator and electrophotonic detector, so the devices with higher bandwidth can be used to generate arbitrary waveform with a higher repetition rate. Therefore, the scheme has good application prospects. Keywords:photonic microwave/ microwave waveform generator/ time-domain synthesis/ Mach-Zehnder modulation
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2.理论分析微波波形发生器的原理图如图1. 两个单驱动MZM分别偏置在线性工作点和最低功率点位置, 当不同波长的两束光波在时域叠加合成时, 可以产生不同的微波波形输出. 因此通过调节调制器的偏置电压以及调制深度, 可以实现调制光信号相位和幅度的控制, 最终实现光子微波波形产生. 图 1 基于双波长时域合成技术的微波波形发生器原理图, 图中LD为激光器, WDM为波分复用器, PC为偏振控制器, OC为3 dB光耦合器, MZM为马赫-曾德尔调制器, ODL为光延时线, AMP为微波放大器 Figure1. Schematic diagram of the proposed microwave waveform generator based on dual-wavelength time domain synthesis technology. LD, laser diode; WDM, wavelength division multiplexer; PC, polarization controller; OC, 3 dB optical coupler; MZM, Mach-Zehnder modulator; ODL, optical delay line; AMP, amplifier.