JOURNAL OF LIGHTWAVE TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 32, NO.
20, OCTOBER 15, 2014
Coherent Filterless Wideband
Microwave/Millimeter-Wave Channelizer
Based on Broadband Parametric Mixers
A. O. J. Wiberg, Member, IEEE, D. J. Esman, Student Member, IEEE, L. Liu, J. R. Adleman, S. Zlatanovic, V. Ataie,
E. Myslivets, Bill P.-P. Kuo, Member, IEEE, N. Alic, Member, IEEE, E. W. Jacobs, Member, IEEE,
and S. Radic, Member, IEEE
Abstract—An essential capability in many applications, ranging
from commercial, surveillance and defense, is to analyze the spec-
tral content of intercepted microwave and millimeter-wave signals
over a very wide bandwidth in real-time and with high resolution. A
range of photonic schemes have been introduced for the real-time
processing of wideband signals to overcome limitations of cur-
rent conventional electronic frequency measurement approaches.
Here, a novel microwave/millimeter-wave channelizer is presented
based on a RF photonic front-end employing parametric wave-
length multicasting and comb generation. This new technology
enables a contiguous bank of channelized coherent I/Q IF signals
covering extremely wide RF instantaneous bandwidth. High chan-
nel counts and wide RF instantaneous bandwidth are enabled by
use of parametrically generated frequency-locked optical combs
spanning >4 THz. Full field analysis capabilities of the coherent
detection system are demonstrated by frequency domain analy-
sis of 18 contiguous 1.2 GHz IF channels covering 15.5 GHz to
37.1 GHz input frequency range, and time and spectral domain
analysis of a 75 GHz harmonically generated input signal. Sensi-
tivity and dynamic range of the system are analyzed and discussed.
Index Terms—Analog optical links, channelization, microwave
photonics, multicasting, nonlinear optics, optical processing, para-
metric amplifier, parametric mixers, spectrum analysis.
I. INTRODUCTION
ETECTION and analysis of spectral content of microwave
D and millimeter-wave signals is essential in a wide range of
applications as it enables real time intercept and analysis of wire-
less signals. However, both the resolution and sensitivity of these
techniques are challenged by emerging extremely wideband
Manuscript received January 1, 2014; revised March 11, 2014; accepted
April 15, 2014. Date of publication April 24, 2014; date of current version
September 1, 2014. This work was supported in part by the Office of Naval
Research.
A. O. J. Wiberg and N. Alic are with the California Institute for Telecommu-
nications and Information Technologies, University of California San Diego, La
Jolla, CA 92093 USA (e-mail: awiberg@ucsd.edu; nalic@ucsd.edu).
D. J. Esman, L. Liu, V. Ataie, E. Myslivets, B. P.-P. Kuo and S. Radic
are with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of
California San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093 USA (e-mail:desman@eng.ucsd.edu;
lal007@ucsd.edu; vataie@ucsd.edu; ymyslive@ucsd.edu; p2kuo@ucsd.edu;
sradic@ucsd.edu).
J. R. Adleman, S. Zlatanovic, and E. W. Jacobs are with the SSC
Pacific, Advanced Photonics Technology Branch, San Diego, CA 92152-
5001 USA (e-mail: james.adleman@navy.mil; sanja.zlatanovic@navy.mil;
bill.jacobs@navy.mil).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JLT.2014.2320445
0733-8724 © 2014 IEEE. Translations and content mining are permitted for academic research only. Personal use is also permitted, but republication/redistribution
requires IEEE permission. See http://www.ieee.org/publications standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
3609
signals covering >>10 GHz. These challenges require the de-
velopment of channelized receivers, which divide the RF spec-
trum to be analyzed into narrower frequency bins, effectively
sub-rating the input and allowing for signal processing with
increased resolution [1]. This type of receiver plays a critical
role in radar and electronic warfare applications, which de-
mand wideband frequency analysis with high dynamic range [1].
A conventional channelized receiver uses a bank of filters to
provide separate RF channels to the system backplane; this ap-
proach poses a set of implementation and performance chal-
lenges, including noise figure penalty due to amplification and
splitting, precise alignment of filters at a fine frequency pitch,
and high filter isolation to minimize channel crosstalk [1].
To overcome these constraints, a variety of photonic-assisted
approaches have been proposed for instantaneous frequency
analysis [2]. In contrast to electronic front-ends, the useful band-
width for optical signal transport is orders of magnitude larger
than the RF instantaneous bandwidths of interest. Therefore RF
photonic designs provide freedom to frequency translate very
wideband signals, allowing receiver designs that accommodate
broad bandwidth and frequency reconfigurability, and can de-
couple filter bandwidth and center frequency requirements. This
fundamental advantage has recently been utilized by spectral
signal replicating optical front ends employing either modu-
lated frequency combs [3], [4] or parametric signal wavelength
multicasters [5].
The recent development of precisely dispersion engineered
parametric fiber optic waveguides [6] enables optical spec-
tral signal multicasting [7], and high frequency digital [8]
and analog [9] signal processing of extremely wideband RF
signals. Low distortion, high count parametric replication of
these signals [10] enables optical front ends that can deliver
tens to hundreds of channels in parallel. Furthermore, para-
metric generated combs enable a formation of spectral sig-
nal replicas with hundreds of copies with frequency spacing
spanning from 10 GHz to 1 THz or more. This method for-
goes other optical techniques of generating combs, for instance
O/E-modulator-based combs [3], [4], which in practice are lim-
ited to an order of magnitude narrower availed signal band-
width with frequency pitch less than 100 GHz. An alterna-
tive approach for frequency comb generation is based on a
mode-locked laser which in principle can span over many tera-
hertz, using low frequency repetition rate (i.e. small frequency
pitch) [11], but having a very large pitch (e.g. high repetition
3610
rate) and a simultaneously broad frequency span presents a chal-
lenge.
The recent introduction of shock wave parametric mixers [12]
allows creation of highly coherent frequency combs spanning
the optical C and L bands, derived from a pair of standard
telecommunication WDM laser sources referenced to a single
low phase noise CW laser [13].
Recognizing this capability, we here report a novel con-
cept for microwave/millimeter-wave channelization employing
parametrically generated spectrally wideband low-noise opti-
cal combs. This enables an RF front-end design providing at
its output a contiguous bank of channelized coherent I/Q in-
termediate frequency (IF) signals covering extremely wide RF
instantaneous bandwidth, which was introduced in [14]. The
experimental demonstration uses parametric signal wavelength
multicasting, which is frequency locked to a shifted local os-
cillator (LO) array comb. The experimental demonstration of
bandwidth-resolution reconfigurable analysis describes an 18-
channel system with selectable center frequency from 25 to
75 GHz and a continuous 21.6 GHz bandwidth.
This paper is organized as follows. Section II summarizes the
operating principle of the coherent parametric based channel-
izer. Section III discusses details of comb generation. The de-
scription of the experimental setup for spectral analysis is done
in Section IV. The experimental results and the performance
analysis are presented in Section V. Discussion and concluding
remarks follow in Section VI.
II. PRINCIPLE OF OPERATION
The principle of the novel channelizer, illustrated in Fig. 1
relies on coherent channel replication and filterless sub-band
extraction. The RF signal is modulated on an optical carrier and
subsequently replicated by the parametric mixer to ΔfP -pitched
frequency grid (C1−N ); the second parametric mixer simulta-
neously generates the reference frequency comb (R1−N ) with
frequency pitch ΔfP + δ, precisely offset from the multicast
grid. As a result, the reference tones will experience a progres-
sive (i.e. Vernier) frequency walk-off from the closest signal
replica, as shown in Fig. 1(b): the alignment between the first
signal copy (C1 ) and the first reference comb tone (R1 ) guar-
antees that the center of the kth signal replica (Ck ) will be
shifted by (k − 1) × δ with respect to the nearest reference
tone (R1 ). The architecture critically relies on the ability to
derive all optical waves from a single high coherent optical
source (master).
In practice, this means that all sub-bands of the original chan-
nel are being addressed by a set of self-referenced LOs. When
combined in a coherent receiver, the kth reference tone will beat
with the portion of the signal replica in its immediate spectral
vicinity, as illustrated in Fig. 1(b). The sub-rate detector response
acts as an electrical bandpass filter and rejects the spectral con-
tent that is distant from LO. While this approach eliminates the
need for narrow, stabilized physical filters in the optical domain,
the true advantage of the architecture is its reconfigurability.
By simply changing the pitch and offset of the multicast- and
LO-combs, the channel spectral binning (δ), i.e. resolution, can
JOURNAL OF LIGHTWAVE TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 32, NO. 20, OCTOBER 15, 2014
be arbitrarily varied nearly instantaneously. Equally important,
by changing the common frequency offset of the combs, a dif-
ferent signal frequency sub-band can be analyzed without need
for slow tuning or substitution of a physical filter bank that
would be required in conventional channelizer architecture.
Practical mixers possess operational bandwidth in excess
of 20 THz, sufficient to generate more than 100 copies of a
100-GHz-wide signal. Consequently, a high-probability inter-
cept can be initiated by initially programming the analyzer in
a “stare-all” configuration to access the entire channel band.
Once the sub-band of interest is identified, the channelizer can
be reconfigured to provide much higher resolution access.
Finally, the digitization burden can be diminished by coher-
ent detection that applies ADC to both I and Q quadratures
simultaneously. Full field access guarantees measurement of
the full frequency space (positive and negative frequencies) de-
fined by instantaneous LO positioning. By digital processing
of all adjacent spectral bins, a full time domain signal can be
reconstructed from strictly referenced sub-channel data allow-
ing wideband time-domain analysis [15] without any physical
change to the photonics front-end.
III. CW-SEED FREQUENCY COMB GENERATION
The proposed channelization scheme rests on the ability to
generate hi-fidelity signal copies and coherent LO combs, which
simultaneously have sufficient power, spectral purity, frequency
coverage, frequency stability, and frequency pitch tuning for an
agile adaptation of coverage frequency range. The target RF
frequency range of interest stretches far in to the mm-wave
regime, i.e. beyond 100 GHz, which introduces additional re-
quirements on the technique for optical comb generation. Con-
ventional comb-generating techniques, based on electro-optical
(E/O) modulators or mode-locked lasers, only partially satisfy
the criteria for the signal quality mentioned above, for instance
arbitrary choice of wideband comb pitch and also power and
fidelity of the comb lines are not satisfied.
Alternatively, the recently introduced cavity-less technique
[10], [12] based on beating of the two phase-locked CW tones
in a synthesized nonlinear mixer addresses all target require-
ments. The nonlinear mixer is designed with a heterogeneous
(multi-section) architecture supporting creation of the shock
waves, thus significantly enhancing the efficiency of the nonlin-
ear beating. Such effect is achieved by precise balancing of the
effects of the nonlinear chirping and linear compression. More-
over, parametric fluorescence can degrade the performance, but
with proper dispersion engineering of the mixer stages it can be
suppressed. This approach also allows for the ability to freely
change the comb-pitch and frequency-locking between signal
replication and LO combs [16].
The principle of the shock-wave mixer is presented in Fig. 2.
Two CW-pumps are first launched into the first nonlinear com-
pressor stage that induces chirping to the beating waveform.
The second linear section having negative dispersion (β2 < 0)
eliminates the nonlinear chirp converting the original sinusoid
into the train of the high power pulses (shock waves), thus sig-
nificantly enhancing the nonlinear processes in the following
WIBERG et al.: COHERENT FILTERLESS WIDEBAND MICROWAVE/MILLIMETER-WAVE CHANNELIZER
Fig. 1. (a) Photonic assisted channelizer: Signal is replicated to ΔfP -pitched frequency grid (C 1 −N ) and combined with the frequency comb (R 1 −N ), offset
by δ. Each tone of the reference comb acts as LO for a specific signal sub-band. (b) Coherent receiver: k-th signal replica (C k ) is combined with the tone of the
reference comb (R k ) to select the sub-band centered at (k-1) δ away from the carrier. The receiver passband (Δf) is set by the analog bandwidth of photodiodes
and following electronics. After digitization DSP can be applied to achieve, for instance, a boxcar filter response.
Fig. 2. Principle of the shockwave mixer. The initial beat signal is generated by
two injection locked CW-lasers, and chirping and compression is accomplished
in the compressor section which is followed by broad frequency comb generation
in the mixer section.
nonlinear stage (mixer). The shock waves receive significant
self-phase modulation spectral broadening in the mixer made of
dispersion-engineered HNLF and generate multiple equidistant
spectral tones synchronized in phase.
The shockwave mixer design can also be modified to perform
optical wavelength multicasting [7], [10]. Specifically, a signal
seed can be multiplexed with the two strong pump waves that not
only create a comb in the heterogeneous mixer, but also replicate
this signal across the comb spectrum creating its multiple copies
sitting at spectrally distinct carriers.
The use of multiple stages, not only enhances the four-wave
mixing properties of the mixer, but also significantly increases
its Brillouin threshold through programmed fiber tension, thus
increasing the allowed amount of launched power and, corre-
spondingly, an increase of the power of the individual comb lines
and multicasted copies. Indeed, the temporal squeezing of the
beating waveform accelerates a process of creation of the mul-
tiple tones that absorb the power from original the CW pumps,
therefore suppressing back-propagating Brillouin waves. The
properly engineered mixer totally eliminates a need of spectral
3611
dithering previously required in order to suppress these parasitic
waves. Dithering techniques preclude narrow, stable comb line
generation, as well as, undistorted signal multicasting, as un-
avoidable frequency-to-amplitude modulation will deteriorate
the signal integrity. The further increase of the SBS threshold
can be achieved by introducing a specific tension map into non-
linear stages [17]. This enables stable and high spectral purity
comb generation.
The proposed system relies on the fidelity of the generated
comb-lines (copies) as well as the frequency locking between
the two optical frequency combs that are used. Even though the
shockwave mixer design allows for wideband frequency gener-
ation, it does not guarantee the coherency across the comb [18].
If phase uncorrelated pump seeds are being used, the linewidth
of the generated comb tones will progressively grow with line-
count, which is unacceptable in the intended application. How-
ever, the seed pumps can be correlated by using optical injec-
tion locking [19], by deriving injection locking seed tones from
a single master laser (ML), as depicted in Fig. 2. The use of
high power slave lasers (SLs) also provides means for improved
power budget. Indeed, by using optical amplifiers operated in
deep saturation, a close to ideal, low additive noise seeding of
the shockwave mixer is realized. Moreover, the use of injection
locking tones from a single ML, is not limited to only one comb,
but could also be shared by a second comb, with for instance a
different pitch. The two combs will consequently be locked to
each other by sharing the same master seed, which is one of the
critical components in the proposed scheme.
The principle of the system operation, described in Section II,
was first investigated using a simulation model of the sys-
tem. Two locked combs, one for multicasting and one acting
as an LO-comb, were created utilizing a rigorous non-linear
Schrödinger equation solver, using design strategies outlined
in [10], [12]. The target channelizer frequency range was from
15.5 to 37.1 GHz using 18 channels with 1.2 GHz bandwidth.
A pitch of the copies was set to around 200 GHz to accommo-
date the covered frequency range, thus, dictating the multicas-
ting and LO-combs were chosen to have a pitch of 198.8 and
200 GHz, respectively, to achieve Vernier shifting of 1.2 GHz per
copy/LO-line. Subsets of the simulated multicasting/LO-combs
are shown in Fig. 3, showing the spectral range of the channels.
3612
Fig. 3. Results of simulation of the multicasting mixer and LO mixer combs,
showing 18 wavelength multicasted copies and the 18 corresponding LO-comb
lines.
Fig. 4. Simulated response of the channelizer for different frequency inputs
from 18 to 36 GHz with a simultaneous sweep in power over 40 dB. Each color
represents one of the 18 channelizer channels.
A broad bandwidth and flat response is achieved over the 30 nm
range of interest. The 18 copies of the signal were paired with
corresponding Vernier shifted LO comb lines in the coherent re-
ceivers, as outlined in Fig. 1. The I- and Q-channel outputs were
then used to form the contiguous channelized frequency band.
To demonstrate the function of the channelizer, a test signal was
tuned from 18 to 36 GHz with a simultaneous change in power.
The results of the simulation are shown in Fig. 4, demonstrat-
ing staring capability for the different signal frequency inputs.
This shows proof of principle of the intended function of the
proposed channelizer system.
IV. EXPERIMENT
The channelizer architecture was experimentally demon-
strated using the set-up shown in Fig. 5. The core technology
was based on two shockwave parametric mixers performing
multicasting and LO-comb generation, respectively, that were
implemented using a two-section design, as discussed in the
previous section. The two mixers were frequency locked to a
single narrow-linewidth external-cavity laser serving as the ML
centered at 193.50 THz. The ML carrier was split into seed
tones by E/O modulators to guarantee frequency referencing
JOURNAL OF LIGHTWAVE TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 32, NO. 20, OCTOBER 15, 2014
in multicast and LO mixers employing optical injection lock-
ing [19]. To seed the multicast mixer, two concatenated phase
and a Mach–Zehnder modulators (MZM) were used to gener-
ate a seed frequency comb with 24.85 GHz pitch; in case of LO
comb, two concatenated phase modulators were used to generate
a frequency comb with 25.0 GHz frequency pitch. The two RF-
synthesizers used were referenced by a 10 MHz reference signal.
Subsequently, two comb lines with 397.6 GHz pitch (193.3012
and 193.6988 THz) were selected and used to injection lock
two distributed-feedback high power SL possessing 100 mW of
output power, namely Pump 1 and Pump 2, respectively. This
method resulted in the creation of two frequency referenced
optical waves with no loss in the SL OSNR. The new tones
represent mixer pump seeds and can be generated at nearly arbi-
trary frequency spacing, limited only by one’s ability to generate
sufficiently wide seed reference comb. As mentioned, the high
power of the SLs resulted in very small degradation of OSNR
after being amplified with subsequent erbium doped fiber am-
plifiers (EDFA), and ONSR0.1 nm of over 62 dB was retained.
A third seed comb line was selected at 193.5994 THz amplified
with an EDFA and modulated with the incoming test signal.
The test signal, generated by an RF-synthesizer, was modu-
lated onto the optical wave with a quadrature biased MZM.
The two injection locked pump SLs were amplified by high
power EDFAs, combined with the signal and launched into the
mixer.
Similarly, for the LO-comb pump seeds, two comb lines were
selected to attain 200 GHz spacing, at 193.425 and 193.625 THz
and subsequently used for LO injection locking. The amplified
LO pump-seeds (Pump 3 and Pump 4) were amplified, with a
maintained ONSR0.1 nm of over 62 dB.
The multicasting and LO-comb mixer blocks shown in Fig. 5
employed a two-section design, as previously introduced in
Fig. 2. The first stage of the mixer was constructed using an
HNLF that was longitudinally strained to increase the Brillouin
threshold beyond that of the CW pump level [17]. The compres-
sion stage was composed of standard single-mode-fiber match-
ing the frequency chirp induced in the first stage. The second,
mixing stage, was built using dispersion-flattened HNLF pos-
sessing small normal dispersion. This section was engineered
with dispersive variation below 1 ps/nm/km over the entire comb
bandwidth. The dispersion of the HNLF was precisely con-
trolled to maintain operation well within the normal dispersion
region and suppress modulation-instability amplified noise [12].
Due to the different pump frequency pitch for the multicasting
and LO-mixer designs the fiber lengths for the two designs were:
105, 6, and 200 m and 100, 15, and 200 m, respectively. The
multicast signal copies were generated with 198.8 GHz pitch and
an LO comb with 200 GHz pitch, providing a Vernier frequency
walk-off of 1.2 GHz between the two combs.
The multicast signal copies and LO-comb lines are selected
and fanned out to the coherent receiver, ideally by using arrayed
waveguide gratings (AWGs). A pair of tunable filters were used
in the experiment to mimic the function of the AWGs. In the
back plane, a dual-channel 3.6 GSample/s 12-bit ADC was used
to capture I and Q channels and further DSP was subsequently
applied offline using a computer.
WIBERG et al.: COHERENT FILTERLESS WIDEBAND MICROWAVE/MILLIMETER-WAVE CHANNELIZER 3613

Fig. 5. Experimental setup. ML: Master laser, SL: Slave laser; PM: Phase modulator, PS: RF phase shifter, MZM: Mach–Zehnder modulator, OP: Optical
wavelength processor, WDM: Wavelength division multiplexer, PD: Photodiode, BGD: Bragg grating demultiplexer, AWG: Arrayed waveguide grating.

RBW: 0.1 nm
0 (a) P1 P2
Optical Power (dBm)

Signal
−20
C
C C5 C4 C3 C2 C1 C-1 C-2 -3 C-4 C-5 C-6 C-7 C-8
C10 C9 C8 C7 6
−40

−60
1540 1550 1560
Wavelength (nm)
10
RBW: 0.1 nm
(b)
Optical Power (dBm)

0 P3 P4
−10
−20
−30
−40
−50
1540 1550 1560
Wavelength (nm)
Fig. 6. Optical spectra at the output of the multicasting mixer and local oc-
sillator comb mixer, respectively, showing the 18 multicasted copies and the 18
corresponding LO-comb lines.
V. RESULTS
The spectra at the output of the multicasting and LO mixers
are shown in Fig. 6. From the multicasting mixer, 18 chan-
nels (copies, denoted CN ) were selected having power variation
within 6.5 dB. The mixer design can be further improved to
reduce power variation and improve flatness [13], [16]. The cor-
responding 18 coherent LO comb lines, spanning from 192.025
to 195.425 THz, were used to create the different channelizer
sub-channels with 1.2-GHz Vernier shift, as seen in Fig. 6. Con-
sequently, a continuous frequency channelization was achieved
with a span of 21.6 GHz and input frequency range from 15.5
to 37.1 GHz.
The system performance was characterized by measuring
each channel individually with single and two-tone measure-
ments and frequency sweeps. The result of measuring the fre-
Fig. 7. Time-frequency plot of frequency sweep over the the covered range.
quency response of the system, synthesized from measurements
of each channel with the input signal repeatedly swept across
the full frequency range, is shown in Fig. 7 as a time-frequency
plot. As seen, seamless capturing of frequency sweep over all
the sub-channel coverage range is achieved using a 10 MHz
resolution bandwidth. During the sweep over the covered range
there was no strong cross-talk observed between the channels
(inter channel) over the covered range. As seen in Fig. 7, there
are no spurious signals larger than −45 dBc. Further analysis
of the in-channels performance shows that the frequency re-
sponse of the channelizer has a flatness within +/−3 dB over
the input signal frequency range, but improved uniformity could
be achieved with additional calibration. The variation in power
of individual channels was due to the different power in the
comb lines, spectral response in the optical filters and frequency
roll-off of the modulator.
The channelizer was further characterized using single tone
stimuli to measure the dynamic range and sensitivity. The data
was captured by varying the input power level from −95 to
20 dBm in the RF synthesizer. The power reaching the MZM,
which was defined as the input to the system, was 3.9 dB less due
to the insertion loss in a 3 dB-coupler used to combine a second
signal synthesizer for subsequent two stimuli measurements,
and cables. The result of the measurement of copy 2 is presented
3614 JOURNAL OF LIGHTWAVE TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 32, NO. 20, OCTOBER 15, 2014

80
(a)
70

Dynamic range (dB)

DR w/o IQ error

60

50
DR w/ IQ error
40

30

20
−8 −6 −4 −2 0 2 4 6 8 10
Copy #
−40
(b)
Fig. 8. Single tone dynamic range and RF senistivity measurement of copy 2.

Sensitivity (dBm)
−50
0
f1 (a) Copy -5 f1 (b) Copy 2
−20 −60
Power (dB)

−40
−60 IQ error IQ error −70
−80
−80
19.2 19.6 20 26.6 27 27.4 −8 −6 −4 −2 0 2 4 6 8 10
Frequency (GHz) Frequency (GHz) Copy #

f1 f2 (c) Copy -2 Copy 6 (d) f1 f2 Fig. 10. Results of channelizer characterization with single tone stimuli
0
Power (dB)

−20
IQ error
IQ error
−40
−60
22.8 23.2 23.6 31.4 31.8
Frequency (GHz) Frequency (GHz)
Fig. 9. Results of channelizer characterization with (a), (b) single tone stimuli
and (c), (d) two tone stimuli.
in Fig. 8. The sensitivity was defined as power of the input signal
yielding output distinguishable from the noise floor, as marked
in the Fig. 8. Furthermore, the SNR-limited dynamic range was
defined as the ratio of the 1 dB compression point to noise
limited sensitivity, also marked in Fig. 8. The response of the
system was limited by non-linear characteristics of the MZM
transfer function. The highest contribution to the nonlinearity in
the receiver was not from the MZM transfer function, but caused
by an IQ-error due to a non-ideal 90◦ optical hybrid [20], which
is seen in the FFT-spectra in Figs. 9(a) and (b). Therefore, the
dynamic range was also limited by the spur from the IQ-error,
and this contribution was characterized, as marked in Fig. 8.
The different channels were characterized and the results for
dynamic range, with and without the contribution of the IQ-
error, and the sensitivity, respectively, are presented in Fig. 10.
The maximum dynamic range of 65 dB was recorded. The RF
input signal sensitivity of each channel is shown in Fig. 10(b),
where a minimum sensitivity of −58.4 dBm was recorded using
a 1 MHz resolution bandwidth. The FFT-spectra of two copies,
copy −5 and 2, shown in Figs. 9(a) and (b), in which an RF input
sensitivity of −55 and −57 dBm and SNR-limited dynamic
range of 66.8 and 64 dB. Both measurements were captured
(a) dynamic range, shown without (w/o) and with (w/) IQ error included, and
(b) RF input sentisivity.
with a 1 MHz resolution bandwidth. Note that the sensitivity
was measured without a low-noise electrical amplifier (LNA)
32.2
before the modulator, and with an LNA the sensitivity could be
significantly improved.
The channelizer performance was further investigated using
two-tone stimuli, which was generated by two RF-signal syn-
thesizers, in order to characterize the two-tone dynamic range
and the third-order inter modulation (IMD3) limited spurious-
free dynamic range (SFDR). The power level of the two input
RF signals were increased from −20 to 12 dBm per tone, while
the system response was recorded. The FFT spectra of two
copies are shown Figs. 7(c) and (d). Here it is seen that spurs
from several sources contribute to limit the dynamic range. The
strongest contribution is from the aforementioned IQ-error. The
IMD3-tones cause the second strongest set of spurs. Further,
the electrical amplifiers used in the receiver before the ADCs
generated second order spurs in each of the I and Q channels.
These spurs have the same phase and thus appear symmetrically
around the dc-level, as seen in Figs. 7(c) and (d). They could be
eliminated using electrical amplifiers with better linearity and
saturation power. A typical measurement is shown in Fig. 11,
displaying the power of the fundamental tones, noise, IMD3 and
the strongest spur, namely the one originating from the IQ-error.
The latter set the practical limit of the dynamic range, as marked
in Fig. 11. However, as the IQ error could be significantly re-
duced or eliminated, it is also of interest to analyze the dynamic
range limited by the IMD3. The results of maximum dynamic
range to any spur or noise for the different copies are presented
in Fig. 12(a). Both the results with and without the dominating
WIBERG et al.: COHERENT FILTERLESS WIDEBAND MICROWAVE/MILLIMETER-WAVE CHANNELIZER 3615

(a)

0 25 50 75 100 (GHz)
0

−20

Power (dB)
−40

−60

−80

73.5 74 74.5 75 75.5 76

Frequency (GHz)
CW
signals
(b) Pulsed
signals
0
Fig. 11. Two tone input measurement of copy 2 fundamental and IMD3 tones,

Power (dB)
as well as, measured spurs from the spurs induced by the IQ error.

Amplitude (a.u.)
-20

80 -60
Two tone Dynamic range (dB)

(a) 60
70 )
40 μs
76 e(
75.5
75 Tim
60 DR w/o IQ error 74.5 20
Frequen 74
cy (GHz) 73.5 0
50
DR w/ IQ error
40 Fig. 13. (a) Example of high resolution access to sub-band centered at 75 GHz,
(b) full-field analysis of signal in time and frequency using DSP.
30

20 distortion-limited dynamic range was 95.5 and 97 dB·Hz2/3 ,

−8 −6 −4 −2 0 2 4 6 8 10 respectively. Furthermore, optimization of the system by reduc-
Copy # ing optical loss in non-ideal and non-dedicated components and
110 use better IF LNAs with better linearity and lower noise, could
(b) improve the performance of the system by reducing the noise
and increasing the dynamic range.
SFDR (dB.Hz2/3)

100
90
80
70
−8 −6 −4 −2 0 2
Copy #
Fig. 12. Results of channelizer characterization with two tone stimuli
(a) dynamic range, shown without (w/o) and with (w/) IQ error included, and
(b) IMD3 distortion limited SFDR.
IQ-error spurs are presented, and it is seen that the dynamic
range is significantly reduced by the IQ-error spurs. Omitting
the contribution from the IQ-error, the highest dynamic range
was 59.8 dB using a 1 MHz noise resolution bandwidth. Con-
sidering only the IMD3 spur contribution, assuming that the
other contributions could be significantly reduced, the SFDR
can be calculated as shown in Fig 11. Linear extrapolation of
the response of the fundamental and IMD3 tones, as well as the
noise floor measured with 1 Hz resolution bandwidth, shows
the intersects of calculated lines, and from that the SFDR1Hz is
determined. The results of the SFDR characterization are shown
in Fig. 12(b). A maximum SFDR of 97.3 dB·Hz2/3 is recorded.
For copies −2 and 6 shown in Figs. 7(c) and (d), the IMD3
Finally, in order to demonstrate the agility and large input
signal bandwidth of the system, the capturing range was recon-
figured by shifting the frequency offset between the multicasted
copies and LO combs. This was accomplished by reconfiguring
the OP shown in Fig. 5 (a configurable multiple output optical
filter) to select alternative lines from the seed comb for the signal
generation. The new frequency band was set to center around
4 6 8 10 75 GHz. Fig. 13(a) shows the ability to select a particular fre-
quency band from a wide covered bandwidth range and capture
it with a high resolution. Moreover, the channelizer implemen-
tation used here based on coherent capturing with using ADCs
in the backplane, not only allows for spectral analysis, but also
real time decomposition of the signal in time. For instance spec-
trogram analysis can be applied to the captured signal or signals
which provide additional tools for processing. This is exempli-
fied in Fig. 13(b) where a full-field analysis of captured signals
in time and frequency is performed using DSP. Having access to
full time-domain information enables recording, demodulation
and reception of captured signals.
VI. CONCLUSION
A channelized coherent detection scheme providing an array
of 18 I/Q IF signals covering RF frequencies from 15.5 to 37.1
GHz has been demonstrated using frequency-locked parametric
multicast comb and LO comb for the first time. Additionally, the
system was reconfigured via agile tuning to capture a sub-band
3616
centered at 75 GHz. In principle, arbitrary instantaneous band-
width and carrier frequency can be accessed by reconfiguring
relative offset and pitch of the two combs. In practice reconfigu-
ration speed and range are limited by the front-end filtering and
locking design, which can be optimized for fast tuning.
Over the frequency range demonstrated, the largest spurious
signals observed were due to I/Q mismatch errors, IMD3 from
the signal modulator and second order spurs from back-end
electrical amplification. The contribution of parametric mix-
ing to system distortions is not significant at the signal opti-
cal power level used, leading to measured dynamic range of
97.3 dB·Hz2/3 . Due to the level of the signal laser, the demon-
strated per channel sensitivity was −57 dBm in a 1 MHz res-
olution bandwidth. Using parametric wavelengths multicasting
there is tradeoff between signal laser power, sensitivity and lin-
earity [21]. However, channel count for channels of a given
dynamic range can be scaled by increasing pump laser power in
the mixer. In contrast, the total optical power that can be used in
a modulated comb approach is limited by the modulator power
handling, creating a tradeoff between number of channels and
per channel dynamic range. This approach has an advantage for
fiber remoting applications in that the signal can be modulated
on a single optical carrier and transported over fiber to a pro-
cessing location, as opposed to sending wide optical combs over
fiber to the antenna/modulator location and back again.
Parametrically generated combs allow for creation of signal
arrays with hundreds of channels and pitches from 10 GHz to
1 THz or more. Further refinement to the parametric mixers
can provide significantly larger number of equalized channels
than demonstrated here. Furthermore, the large number of para-
metrically generated tones allows for a partial overlap of sub-
bands, which could be used for channel linearization by the DSP
post processing. In comparison, modulator-generated combs are
practically limited to an order of magnitude narrower total band-
width and pitch less than 100 GHz. Mode-locked laser combs
can in principle span over many terahertz, using low frequency
repetition rate (i.e. small frequency pitch), but having large pitch
and simultaneously broad frequency span presents a challenge.
Ultimately the approach can provide a low SWaP RF front-
end delivering a high channel count array of IF signals to an
array of backend I/Q receivers. The underlining parametric tech-
nology supports the ability to agilely reconfigure the system
to optimize instantaneous bandwidth, resolution and dynamic
range.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors gratefully acknowledge Sumitomo Electric In-
dustries for providing the highly non-linear fiber used in the
experiment, and SP Devices AB for ADC processing support.
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WIBERG et al.: COHERENT FILTERLESS WIDEBAND MICROWAVE/MILLIMETER-WAVE CHANNELIZER
Andreas O. J. Wiberg (S’04–M’08) received the M.Sc. degree in engineering
physics in 2002, the Licentiate degree in electrical engineering in 2005, and the
Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering in 2008, all from the Chalmers University
of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden. His graduate research has mainly focused
on Microwave Photonic systems and optical millimeter-wave and terahertz gen-
eration, transmission and detection.
From 2008 to 2013, he was with the Photonics system group at the De-
partment of Computer and Electrical Engineering, University of California
San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA. He is currently with the California Institute
of Telecommunications and Information Technologies, La Jolla. His current
research interests include applications of parametric effects in optical fibers,
including high-speed signal generation, all-optical sampling, multicasting, ul-
trafast optical signal processing of digital and analog signals, analog-to-digital-
conversions, and broadband microwave and millimeter-wave channelization.
Daniel Esman (S’13) received the B.A. degree in physics and mathematics from
Kalamazoo College, Kalamazoo, MI, USA. From 2011 to 2012, he worked as
a Junior Engineer at PriTel, Inc.
He is a Predoctoral Researcher at the Department of Electrical and Computer
Engineering, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA. His
research interests include microwave photonic systems and radar/EW signal
processing.
L. Liu, photograph and biography not available at the time of publication.
J. R. Adleman, photograph and biography not available at the time of
publication.
Sanja Zlatanovic (S’06–M’08) received the B.S. degree in electrical engineer-
ing from the University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia, in 1998, and the M.S.
degree in bioengineering and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from
the University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA, in 2002 and 2008,
respectively.
She was an Engineer at the Institute “Mihajlo Pupin,” Belgrade. She was
at Genoptix, Inc., in 2002, and in Agilent Laboratories in 2005. From 2008 to
2011, she was with the Photonic Systems Group, University of California San
Diego, where her research interests were focused on silicon photonic devices
for optical communications and sensing, and parametric processes in midIR.
She is currently with Advanced Technology Branch, SPAWAR Systems Center
Pacific, San Diego, CA.
V. Ataie, photograph and biography not available at the time of publication.
3617
E. Myslivets, photograph and biography not available at the time of
publication.
Bill P.-P. Kuo, photograph and biography not available at the time of
publication.
Nikola Alic (S’00–M’06) received the B.S. degree in optoelectronics from
the Belgrade School of Electrical Engineering, Belgrade, Serbia, in 1998. He
received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in photonics from the Department of
Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California San Diego, La
Jolla, CA, USA, in 2001 and 2006, respectively, for his pioneering work on
the role of electronic equalization in optical communications. After graduation,
he served as a Junior Scientist at the “Vinca” Institute of Nuclear Sciences in
Belgrade, Serbia, where he worked on solitonic pulse compression in nonlinear
fiber arrays. He is currently a Research Scientist at the California Institute
of Telecommunications and Information Technologies. His research interests
include equalization and coding theory in optical communications, high-speed
transmission, detection theory, fiber optic parametric amplifiers, and all-optical
signal processing.
Everett Jacobs (M’05) received the Bachelor degree in physics and M.S. de-
gree in applied physics from the University of California San Diego, La Jolla,
CA, USA, in 1981 and 1986, respectively. He has been working at SPAWAR
Systems Center Pacific since 1981. Since 2000, his focus has been in the area
of microwave photonics and its application to Navy systems.
Mr. Jacobs is a Member of the IEEE Avionics Fiber Optics and Photonics
Conference technical committee, IEEE Photonics Conference Microwave Pho-
tonics Section technical committee, and IEEE Photonics Society Conference
Council.
Stojan Radic received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from the Uni-
versity of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from
the Institute of Optics, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, USA, in 1990,
1992, and 1995, respectively. Immediately thereafter, he served as a Scien-
tist at the Institute of Optics, investigating nonlinear periodic structures and
low-threshold optical switching. During 1997–1998, he held a Senior Scientist
position at Corning Photonics Division. He joined Bell Laboratories Lightwave
Systems research department in 1998 as a Member of the technical staff, where
he served until 2003. He is currently a Professor of Electrical Engineering at
the University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, (UCSD). Immediately
prior to coming to the Jacobs School of Engineering at UCSD, he held a chaired
position at Duke University.
Dr. Radic has published more than 40 articles in refereed journals, and serves
on committees for Optical Fiber Communication, Conference on Lasers and
Electro-Optics and Optical Amplifiers and their Applications, Coherent Optical
Technologies and Applications conferences. His interests include parametric
amplification with signal processing, ultradense bidirectional networking, and
novel signaling formats.