Nine Channel Mid-Power Bipolar Pulse Generator Based on a Field Programmable Gate Array

TL;DR

This paper presents a scalable FPGA-based nine-channel bipolar pulse generator capable of producing mid-power RF pulses at up to 80 MHz, with adjustable pulse widths and synchronization features for optical network applications.

Contribution

It introduces a novel FPGA-based design for multi-channel bipolar pulse generation with adjustable parameters and synchronization, suitable for optical waveguide network reconfiguration.

Findings

Nine independent outputs with 1.5W RF power each.

Repetition rates up to 80 MHz with 1.6 ns pulse width adjustment.

Synchronization capability with external optical components.

Abstract

Many channel arbitrary pulse sequence generation is required for the electro-optic reconfiguration of optical waveguide networks in Lithium Niobate. Here we describe a scalable solution to the requirement for mid-power bipolar parallel outputs, based on pulse patterns generated by an externally clocked field programmable gate array (FPGA). Positive and negative pulses can be generated at repetition rates from up to 80~MHz with pulse width adjustable in increments of 1.6~ns across nine independent outputs. Each channel can provide 1.5W of RF power and it can be synchronised with the operation of other components in an optical network such as light sources and detectors through an external clock with adjustable delay.