Photonic-assisted multiple microwave frequency measurement with improved robustness.

Area of Science:

• Microwave Engineering
• Optical Metrology
• Signal Processing

Background:

• Accurate microwave frequency measurement is crucial for various applications.
• Existing methods can suffer from frequency misjudgment and time synchronization biases.
• Developing robust and precise measurement techniques remains an active research area.

Purpose of the Study:

• To report a novel multiple microwave frequency measurement approach.
• To enhance the robustness and accuracy of frequency measurements.
• To present an experimental demonstration of the proposed technique.

Main Methods:

• Frequency-to-time mapping (FTTM) constructed via optical sideband sweeping and electric-domain intermediate frequency envelope monitoring.
• Balanced photodetection to cancel beat components from signals under test (SUT).
• Introduction of a reference signal for mapping SUT frequency to a relative time difference, mitigating time synchronization bias.

Main Results:

• Demonstrated microwave frequency measurement across the 16 to 26 GHz range.
• Achieved an average measurement error of 7.53 MHz.
• The optimized operations successfully excluded frequency misjudgment and avoided measuring bias.

Conclusions:

• The proposed FTTM approach offers improved robustness for microwave frequency measurements.
• The technique shows promise for practical applications requiring high-precision frequency determination.
• The experimental validation confirms the effectiveness of the developed measurement scheme.