Ultrabroadband radio-frequency arbitrary waveform generation with high-speed phase and amplitude modulation capability.

We introduce a novel photonic-assisted ultrabroadband radio-frequency arbitrary waveform generation setup capable of high-speed phase and amplitude modulation of the individual arbitrary waveforms. The waveform generator is based on an optical interferometer, within which a high-resolution optical pulse shaper and integrated optic phase and intensity modulators are placed, followed by frequency-to-time mapping. The phase and amplitude of each ultrabroadband waveform within the generated sequence can be continuously tuned by adjusting the driving voltages applied to the phase and intensity modulator pair, hence overcoming the slow update speed of conventional spatial light modulator-based pulse shapers. Moreover, this data modulation is completely independent from and does not interfere with RF waveform design. Programmable ultrabroadband RF sequences, spanning more than 4.7 octaves from 2 to 52 GHz, are modulated with real-time data in up to 16 level, M-ary phase-shift keying and quadrature amplitude modulation formats.