Optical generation of rapidly tunable millimeter wave subcarrier

Author

Li, Yifei ; Vieira, Amarildo J C ; Herczfeld, Peter R.

Author_Institution

Center for Microwave/Lightwave Eng., Drexel Univ., Philadelphia, PA, USA

Volume

2

fYear

1999

fDate

1999

Firstpage

645

Abstract

Several applications, such as frequency chirped lidar-radar systems, optical/wireless communications and biomedical imaging, require optical transmitters that can generate rapidly tunable, low phase noise and low intensity noise millimeter wave sub-carriers. Using an electro-optic Nd:LiNbO₃ microchip laser in an optical heterodyning scheme, we designed a simple, robust, monolithic and low-cost optical transmitter, that can generate tunable sub-carriers from DC to 50 GHz. Furthermore, we demonstrate that due to the unique approach, whereby the tuning and lasing occur within the same crystal, the dynamics of the tuning process are fast

Keywords

electro-optical devices; laser beam applications; laser cavity resonators; laser tuning; lithium compounds; microwave photonics; millimetre wave generation; multiwave mixing; neodymium; optical phase locked loops; optical radar; optical transmitters; solid lasers; 0 to 50 GHz; LiNbO₃:Nd; Nd:LiNbO₃ microchip laser; biomedical imaging; electro-optic microchip laser; frequency chirped lidar-radar system; low intensity noise; low phase noise; low-cost optical transmitters; millimeter wave subcarrier; monolithic optical transmitter; optical generation; optical heterodyning scheme; optical/wireless communications; rapidly tunable MM-wave subcarrier; Biomedical optical imaging; Chirp; Frequency; Laser tuning; Optical mixing; Optical noise; Optical transmitters; Optical tuning; Phase noise; Tunable circuits and devices;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Microwave and Optoelectronics Conference, 1999. SBMO/IEEE MTT-S, APS and LEOS - IMOC '99. International

Conference_Location

Rio de Janeiro

Print_ISBN

0-7803-5807-4

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/IMOC.1999.866262

Filename

866262