Photonic-assisted microwave frequency measurement system based on a silicon ORR

A photonic-assisted instantaneous microwave frequency measurement (IFM) system is demonstrated with add-drop optical ring resonators (ORRs) on silicon-on-insulator (SOI) platform. By launching a double-sideband suppressed carrier modulated optical signal into the ring, a monotonous amplitude comparison function (ACF) irrespective of the amplitudes of both optical and RF signals is established to translate the RF frequency to the power ratio between the through and drop ports of the ring. Two experiments have been set up with two rings which have different Q values. Two 25 µm radius ORRs with Q values of 3974 and 25833 are used to offer different measurement ranges and accuracies. In the experiments the ORR with low Q value has a large measurement range of 0.5-35 GHz, and the other one with high Q value exhibits a high accuracy of 0.1 GHz in the frequency range of 0.1-5 GHz.