Relaxed dispersion requirement in the generation of chirped RF signals based on frequency-to-time mapping

Photonic generation of chirped RF signal based on frequency-to-time mapping (FTM) is investigated in this paper. A new criterion on system parameters (dispersion amounts and pulse duration) for the generation of well-shaped linearly chirped signals is given, which is proved to be less restrictive than the currently known conditions. Therefore, requirement on the dispersion amount can be relaxed, which is highly desired in practical implementation of the FTM-based system. Theoretical results are presented, the correctness of which is verified by numerical and experimental results. The reported theory is a good guidance in designing the photonic system for the generation of chirped signals based on FTM.