Frequency Agile Millimeter Wave (MMW) Signal Generator

PSI will leverage our extensive experience and unique capabilities in MMW photonics to design a compact, lightweight, frequency-agile MMW source combining wide, continuous, rapid tunability with superb phase noise and moderate output power. Such a source will have extensive commercial applications in next-generation wireless communications, as well as military applications including reconfigurable and covert communications and electronic warfare. Our photonic system multiplies and upconverts a low-noise, low-frequency reference signal onto an optical carrier (laser) using ultra-broadband electro-optic (EO) modulation. Modulation sidebands injection lock a second laser to a frequency offset from the first by a selectable multiple of the reference. EO modulation is both coherent and ultra-broadband, rendering the lasers mutually coherent, while oscillating at a widely tunable frequency separation. The locked lasers combine on a high-speed photodiode (PD), generating a beat tone at their frequency difference, eliminating optical phase noise. Our concept has been validated in benchtop experiments (Nature Photonics paper); in this effort we will design and specify requirements for an integrated module, based on a silicon-photonic circuit comprising laser cavities, waveguides, couplers, and filters; with hybrid III-V gain integration, packaged with a compact EO modulator, a surface-mounted photodetector, and voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) to provide the reference.