Photonic Generation of Multi-carrier LFM Signals Based on an Optical Frequency Comb

In this report, a photonic method for generating multi-carrier linear frequency modulated (LFM) signals is proposed using an optical frequency comb (OFC). In the experimental demonstration, the generation of a multi-carrier LFM signal having a center frequency of 15 GHz and a total bandwidth of 6 GHz is achieved, in which the number of carriers is 60 and carrier frequency spacing is 100 MHz. Through analyses of the generated signal properties in time domain, the time-frequency domain and the spectrum domain, feasibility of the proposed multi-carrier LFM signal generation method is verified. The proposed method is a promising solution to the generation of multi-carrier LFM signals with very large bandwidth.