Wideband signal detection based on high-speed photonic
analog-to-digital converter
Guang Yang (杨 光), Weiwen Zou (邹卫文)*, Ye Yuan (袁 野),
and Jianping Chen (陈建平)
State Key Laboratory of Advanced Optical Communication Systems and Networks, Department of Electronic
Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China
*Corresponding author: wzou@sjtu.edu.cn
Received September 26, 2017; accepted December 1, 2017; posted online March 6, 2018
This Letter demonstrates the effectiveness of a high-speed high-resolution photonic analog-to-digital converter
(PADC) for wideband signal detection. The PADC system is seeded by a high-speed actively mode locked laser,
and the sampling rate is multiplied via a time-wavelength interleaving scheme. According to the laboratory test,
an X-band linear frequency modulation signal is detected and digitized by the PADC system. The channel
mismatch effect in wideband signal detection is compensated via an algorithm based on a short-time Fourier
transform. Consequently, the signal-to-distortion ratio (SDR) of the wideband signal detection is enhanced to
the comparable SDR of the single-tone signal detection.
OCIS codes: 060.5625, 230.0250, 250.4745, 000.4430.
doi: 10.3788/COL201816.030601.
In modern radar systems, wideband signals are extensively
used to achieve a high resolution of the target detection.
However, the wide bandwidth brings big challenges for
analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) in the reception of
signals
[1]
. The state-of-the-art electronic ADCs provide
an instantaneous bandwidth of ∼2 GHz and a timing
accuracy of ∼100 fs
[2,3]
. Further improvement is limited
by the timing accuracy and analog bandwidth. Fortu-
nately, the photonic ADC (PADC) has been proposed
to break the limitation of electronic ADCs
[4,5]
. In the
PADC systems, the ultra-stable mode-locked lasers
(MLLs) are used to generate sampling clocks with low
timing jitters, and the photonic-modulator-based sam-
pling gates enlarge the bandwidth of the analog input
effectively
[6]
. Juodawlkis et al. presented a 60 MS∕s down-
sampling of an X-band linear frequency modulation
(LFM) signal
[7]
. Ghelfi et al. demonstrated the reception
of X-band and Kα-band LFM signals via a 400 MS∕s
down-sampling in a coherent photonic radar, providing
a resolution of 150 m in distance and 2 km∕h in velocity
in the X-band
[8]
. However, due to the low repetition rate of
the passively MLL (PMLL), the effective sampling rate of
the PADC is limited to be low, which cannot fully exploit
the large spectral range of the high-frequency carrier. It
is worth mentioning that the time-stretched PADC
scheme is an effective method to achieve an ultrahigh
equivalent sampling rate by use of a low-repetition-rate
MLL source
[9,10]
. Most recently, we implemented a pho-
tonic transceiver for wideband radar based on the time-
stretched PADC scheme
[11]
. However, these schemes suffer
from the limited-time aperture in the single-shot mode
[9]
.
Moreover, with verified effectiveness in the applications,
such as spectrum sensing and radar imaging
[12,13]
, the pho-
tonic processing of the wideband signal is drawing more
and more attention in related fields.
In order to further enhance the sampling rate for a
larger input bandwidth, we have demonstrated the gener-
ation of a high-speed sampling clock and a high-speed
time-wavelength interleaving PADC (TW I-PADC) sys-
tem based on an actively MLL (AMLL)
[14–16]
. So far, the
methods used for resolution evaluation and mismatch
compensation in the high-speed TWI-PADC system are
only verified with the single-tone input signal. To meet
the requirements in a practical radar system, these meth-
ods should be further tested with wideband input signals,
especially the LFM signals that are the most commonly
used radar waveform.
In this Letter, a wideband LFM signal with a frequency
range of 8–12 GHz is detected and then digitized by an
AMLL-based TWI-PADC with a 40 GS∕s sampling rate.
Since the signal reception in TWI-PADC always suffers
from channel mismatch induced distortion, a theoretical
model of signal-to-distortion ratio (SDR) for a wideband
LFM signal is derived to evaluate the channel mismatch
effects based on the short-time Fourier transform (STFT)
of the digitized data. Consequently, the SDR of the digi-
tization data is enhanced from 37 to 52 dB after hardware
adjustment and algorithmic compensation.
The experimental configuration of the TWI-PADC
system is illustrated in Fig.
1(a). An AMLL (Calmar
PSL-10-TT) seeded by an electronic synthesizer (Keysight
E8257D) at 10 GHz serves as the laser source . After being
spectrally broadened by a pulse compressor (Calmar
PCS-2), its output is multiplexed by a four-channel
TWI multiplexer (TWI-MUX), so as to four-fold enhance
the photonic sampling clock (from 10 to 40 GHz)
[14]
. Lim-
ited by the optical spectral bandwidth of the AMLL and
pulse compressor, to guarantee the optical powers in each
channel, the number of channels is difficult to be further
added. However, thanks to the high repetition rate of the
COL 16(3), 030601(2018) CHINESE OPTICS LETTERS March 10, 2018
1671-7694/2018/030601(5) 030601-1 © 2018 Chinese Optics Letters