Background-free microwave pulse generator based on both bright and dark temporal gate and a single photodetector

A novel approach to generating background-free microwave pulse based on both bright and dark temporal gate and a single photodetector is proposed and demonstrated. Incoherent wavelength-to-time conversion (WTTC) using only bright or dark gate renders the generation of positive or negative pulse separately. By using both gates simultaneously, background-free pulse is realized with enhanced amplitude compared with that obtained using only bright or dark gate. A dual-output intensity modulator functions as both the bright and dark gate. Narrow drive pulse is provided by the combination of two polarity-opposite electrical pulses with a relative time-delay, which releases the requirement of expensive narrow-pulse generator. Incoherent WTTC using dark gate is demonstrated experimentally. The system resolution remains the same as that using bright gate. Furthermore, UWB pulse with 10-dB bandwidth of 3.8-GHz is generated based on 1-Gb/s gate driven by 1-Gb/s data sequence. Several other background-free pulses are generated to verify the tunability of central frequency, pulse envelope, duty cycle, and repetition rate. In addition, the effect of gate width on WTTC is explored experimentally. With narrower gate width, higher system solution and maximum achievable frequency can be implemented. 10.4-GHz and 14.5-GHz background-free pulses are generated when using 1-Gb/s and 10-Gb/s gate respectively.