Broadband Photonic Radio-Frequency Channelization Based on a 39-GHz Optical Frequency Comb

Abstract

A novel photonic channelization scheme for a wideband radio-frequency (RF) signal based on an optical frequency comb (OFC), a comb filter, and an optical de-mux is proposed and demonstrated. In the proposed channelizer, the input broadband RF signal is multicast by the OFC, spectrally sliced by a Fabry-Perot filter (FPF) and then channelized by a regular optical de-mux. Compared to previous proposals, the OFC can provide uniform and low-noise channelization and simplify the spectral alignment to the FPF. We demonstrate our scheme experimentally based on a 39-GHz-spaced OFC. As an application, instantaneous multiple-frequency measurement is demonstrated by directly detecting the channelized RF signal.