Photonic generation of microwave waveforms with wide chirp tuning range

We show analytically as well as demonstrate experimentally an approach to generate microwave waveforms with wide chirp tuning range. The approach is based on the interference of two temporally-stretched pulses which are time-delayed with respect to each other and having different frequency chirp. This approach is realized by an unbalanced Mach Zehnder Interferometer (MZI) incorporating a linearly-chirped fiber-Bragg-grating (LCFBG) whose group-delay-dispersion (GDD) can be tuned across a wide range. In general, tuning the GDD of the LCFBG changes the chirp rate of the generated microwave waveform and tuning the relative time-delay between the interferometer arms changes the center frequency of the generated microwave waveform. Balanced photodetection is also implemented to obtain DC-free microwave waveforms. Based on this approach, we demonstrate the generation of microwave waveforms with different center frequencies and with the chirp rates ranging from∼−126.7 GHz/ns to ∼+120.8 GHz/ns, including the zero-chirp case.