Xie Yiwei, Zhuang Leimeng, Lowery Arthur James
Opt Lett. 2017 Jul 15;42(14):2742-2745. doi: 10.1364/OL.42.002742.
Phase-coded radio frequency (RF) pulses are widely adopted for radar systems as an effective signal format to enable high-range resolution. However, generating such signals conventionally requires high-speed electronics and complex RF circuitry that impose burdens on the system cost and power consumption. In particular, modern radar systems desire features such as high frequencies, e.g., in the millimeter-wave region, high compactness, and high system flexibility, which pose great challenges for the conventional all-electronics solutions. In contrast, integrated microwave photonics opens a way to solutions that are able to provide those features simultaneously, together with potential for full integration and low cost fabrication. Here, we present an integrated microwave photonic method of a binary-phase-coded millimeter-wave signal generation. The core device is a silicon microring modulator with a device size of 0.13 mm×0.32 mm and a modulation bandwidth of 23 GHz. Using RF seed frequencies of 17.5 GHz and 20 GHz, respectively, we experimentally demonstrated the generation of binary-phase-coded signals at 35 GHz and 40 GHz using our proposed approach, the performance of which was verified by a pulse compression ratio of 94 and 106, respectively. The result of this work points to the realization of a chip-scale flexible millimeter-wave signal generator.
相位编码射频（RF）脉冲作为一种有效的信号格式，被广泛应用于雷达系统中，以实现高距离分辨率。然而，传统上生成此类信号需要高速电子设备和复杂的射频电路，这给系统成本和功耗带来了负担。特别是，现代雷达系统需要诸如高频（例如毫米波频段）、高紧凑性和高系统灵活性等特性，这对传统的全电子解决方案构成了巨大挑战。相比之下，集成微波光子学为能够同时提供这些特性的解决方案开辟了道路，同时还具有全集成和低成本制造的潜力。在此，我们提出了一种生成二相编码毫米波信号的集成微波光子方法。核心器件是一个硅微环调制器，器件尺寸为0.13 mm×0.32 mm，调制带宽为23 GHz。分别使用17.5 GHz和20 GHz的射频种子频率，我们通过实验证明了使用我们提出的方法可以在35 GHz和40 GHz生成二相编码信号，其性能分别通过94和106的脉冲压缩比得到验证。这项工作的结果表明实现了芯片级灵活毫米波信号发生器。
