Photonic generation of millimeter-wave using a silicon microdisk resonator

A simple photonic approach to generating millimeter-wave based on a high-Q silicon microdisk resonator is proposed and demonstrated. The MDR is designed with periodical dual passbands at the drop port so as to filter out different pairs of optical carriers from an optical frequency comb. By beating the two optical frequency components, several millimeter-wave signals have been obtained. A proof-of-concept experiment illustrates millimeter-wave generation of 277 GHz, 306 GHz and 335 GHz with harmonic distortion suppression ratio over 25 dB.