Photonic Generation and Detection of W-Band Chirped Millimeter-Wave Pulses for Radar

Abstract

Based on the frequency-to-time mapping approach, we generate frequency-modulated millimeter-wave (MMW) pulses with central frequencies up to the W-band by a shaped optical pulse excitation of an MMW photonic transmitter with an ultrawide band photodiode as its key component. A coherent detection is achieved via a terahertz time-domain spectroscopic setup. Two different kinds of chirped MMW waveforms are generated; one is a linearly chirped sinusoidal pulse and the other is produced by a frequency-stepped modulation. Through appropriate optical spectral design, the frequency-chirped MMW pulses with instantaneous frequencies sweeping from 120 to 60 GHz, and a time-bandwidth product of ~ 25 is experimentally demonstrated.