Ultralinear 140-GHz FMCW signal generation with optical parametric wideband frequency modulation enabling 1-mm range resolution

Abstract

We demonstrate ultralinear and ultrawideband frequency-modulated continuous-wave (FMCW) signal generation using an optical parametric wideband frequency modulation (OPWBFM) method. The OPWBFM method optically expands the bandwidths of FMCW signals beyond the electrical bandwidths of optical modulators via a cascaded four-wave mixing (FWM) process. Compared to the conventional direct modulation approach, the OPWBFM method simultaneously achieves high linearity and a short measurement time of the frequency sweep. On the other hand, it is also known that the OPWBFM method expands the phase noise of idlers as well as their bandwidths if an input conjugate pair has different phase noise. To avoid this phase noise expansion, it is crucial to synchronize the phase of an input complex conjugate pair of an FMCW signal using an optical frequency comb. For demonstration, we successfully generated an ultralinear 140-GHz FMCW signal by using the OPWBFM method. Moreover, we employ a frequency comb in the conjugate pair generation process, leading to the mitigation of phase noise expansion. By using a 140-GHz FMCW signal, we achieve a range resolution of ∼1 mm through fiber-based distance measurement. The results show the feasibility of an ultralinear and ultrawideband FMCW system with a sufficiently short measurement time.