Open AccessImplementation of Broadband Microwave Arbitrary-Order Time Differential Operators Using a Reconfigurable Incoherent Photonic Processor
Author(s) -
Yongwoo Park,
Mohammad H. Asghari,
Robin Helsten,
JosxE; Azana
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
ieee photonics journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.725
H-Index - 73
eISSN - 1943-0655
pISSN - 1943-0647
DOI - 10.1109/jphot.2010.2091115
Subject(s) - engineered materials, dielectrics and plasmas , photonics and electrooptics
A reconfigurable photonic signal processing system for arbitrary-order temporal differentiation of broadband microwave waveforms, with bandwidths up to a few tens of gigahertz, is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. This technique enables full programmability of the differentiation operator to be applied on the input microwave signal, including any desired linear differential-equation operator, by suitably reshaping the incoherent power spectrum according to the corresponding finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) equations obtained from the Euler's approximation. Successive photonic time derivatives of Gaussian-like pulse intensity waveforms with pulse widths of 42 and 72 ps were accurately achieved up to the second and the fourth order, respectively, using the same photonic processing platform. A more general operator, conceived to directly emulate the second-order differential-equation modeling a high-frequency series resistor, inductor, and capacitor (RLC) circuit, was also implemented and successfully tested.