Microwave Q-band oscillator at 49GHz for broadband frequency conversion based on a Kerr optical soliton crystal micro-comb

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a broadband microwave frequency converter using a Kerr optical micro-comb generated by an integrated micro-ring resonator, achieving high performance in the Q-band for millimeter-wave applications.

Contribution

It introduces a novel microwave frequency converter based on a coherent Kerr optical micro-comb with soliton crystal dynamics, enabling compact and efficient millimeter-wave conversion.

Findings

Achieved a microwave performance up to 40 GHz with a 6.8 dB RF/IF ratio.

Demonstrated a spurious suppression ratio of over 43.5 dB.

Verified good agreement between experimental results and theoretical predictions.

Abstract

We report a broadband microwave frequency converter based on a coherent Kerr optical micro-comb generated by an integrated micro-ring resonator. The coherent micro-comb displays features that are consistent with soliton crystal dynamics with an FSR of 48.9GHz. We use this to demonstrate a high-performance millimeter-wave local oscillator at 48.9GHz in the Q-band for microwave frequency conversion. We experimentally verify the microwave performance up to 40 GHz, achieving a ratio of 6.8 dB between output RF power and IF power and a spurious suppression ratio of > 43.5 dB. The experimental results show good agreement with theory and verify the effectiveness of microwave frequency converters based on coherent optical micro-combs, with the ability to achieve reduced size, complexity, and potential cost.