Photonics-Based Real-Time 2D (Time-Frequency) Broadband Signal Analysis and Processing

This contribution reviews recent work on a new universal analog-processing design for gap-free real-time spectral analysis of broadband microwave signals, through a continuous mapping of the input signal's short-time Fourier transform or spectrogram (SP) along the time domain. This design involves short-pulse sampling and chromatic dispersion. A photonic processor has been demonstrated for real-time SP analysis of GHz-bandwidth arbitrary microwave signals at a speed approaching 5×10
⁹
FTs/second, beyond the potential of present methods. The concept offers novel interesting opportunities for real-time, on-the-fly broadband signal processing by exploiting the powerful joint time-frequency representation framework.