Recent Advances in Programmable Photonic-Assisted Ultrabroadband Radio-Frequency Arbitrary Waveform Generation

TL;DR

This paper reviews recent progress in photonic-assisted ultrabroadband RF arbitrary waveform generation, highlighting key techniques, challenges, and applications such as high-resolution ranging and channel compensation.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of recent advances in programmable photonic RF-AWG, emphasizing new techniques and progress in increasing time bandwidth and aperture.

Findings

Demonstrated ultrabroadband RF-AWG applications in high-resolution ranging

Reviewed proof-of-concept demonstrations for non-line-of-sight channel compensation

Discussed progress in increasing time aperture and bandwidth in RF-AWG

Abstract

This paper reviews recent advances in photonic-assisted radio-frequency arbitrary waveform generation (RF-AWG), with emphasis on programmable ultrabroadband microwave and millimeter-wave waveforms. The key enabling components in these techniques are programmable optical pulse shaping, frequency-to-time mapping via dispersive propagation, and high-speed photodetection. The main advantages and challenges of several different photonic RF-AWG schemes are discussed. We further review some proof-of-concept demonstrations of ultrabroadband RF-AWG applications, including high-resolution ranging and ultrabroadband non-line-of-sight channel compensation. Finally, we present recent progress toward RF-AWG with increased time aperture and time-bandwidth product.