Photonic generation of linearly chirped millimeter wave based on comb-spacing tunable optical frequency comb

We demonstrated a photonic approach to generate a phase-continuous frequency-linear-chirped millimeter-wave (mm-wave) signal with high linearity based on continuous-wave phase modulated optical frequency comb and cascaded interleavers. Through linearly sweeping the frequency of the radio frequency (RF) driving signal, high-order frequency-linear-chirped optical comb lines are generated and then extracted by the cascaded interleavers. By beating the filtered high-order comb lines, center frequency and chirp range multiplied linear-chirp microwave signals are generated. Frequency doubled and quadrupled linearchirp mm-wave signals of range 48.6 to 52.6 GHz and 97.2 to 105.2 GHz at chirp rates of 133.33 and 266.67 GHz/s are demonstrated with the ±1st and ±2nd optical comb lines, respectively, while the RF driving signal is of chirp range 24.3 to 26.3 GHz and chirp time 30 ms.