For phase stabilization of two-tone coherent millimeter-wave/microwave carrier generation, two types of phase detection schemes were devised based on lightwave interferometric technique, the Mach-Zehnder interferometric method and the pseudo Mach-Zehnder interferometric method. The former system showed clear eye patterns at both OOK and PSK modulations of 1 Gbit/s on the 12.5-GHz carrier. The latter system demonstrated the error-free transmission at OOK modulation of 11 Gbit/s on the 100-GHz carrier.

We propose a frequency stabilization system for laser diodes (LD's), in which the major parameters in the stabilization process can be controlled in respond to the monitored frequency noise characteristics in real-time basis. The performance of this system was also tested through stabilizing a 35 mW visible LD. The center frequency of the LD has been stabilized by negative electrical feedback based on Pound-Drever-Hall technique. The linewidth of the LD has been reduced by adapting optical feedback from resonant confocal Fabry-Perot (CFP) cavity. The controlling parameters, especially gain levels and frequency responses of the negative electrical feedback loop can be manipulated to remove the instantaneous frequency noise by monitoring power spectral density (PSD) of the frequency error signals in the real-time basis. The achieved PSD of frequency noise of a sample LD stabilized by the present system was less than 1105 Hz2/Hz for the Fourier frequency < 10 MHz. The reduced linewidth was estimated to be narrower than 400 kHz. The achieved minimum square root of the Allan variance was 3.910-11 at τ = 0.1 msec.

We propose a frequency stabilization system for laser diodes (LDs), in which the electrical feedback loop response can be determined using an on-line genetic algorithm (GA) so as to attain lower LD frequency noise power within the specific Fourier frequency range of interest. At the initial stage of the stabilization, the feedback loop response has been controlled through GA, manipulating the proportional gain, integration time, and derivative time of conventional analog PID controller. Individuals having 12-bit chromosomes encoded by combinations of PID parameters have converged evolutionarily toward an optimal solution providing a suitable feedback loop response. A fitness function has been calculated for each individual in real time based on the power spectral density (PSD) of the frequency noise. The performance of this system has been tested by stabilizing a 50 mW visible LD. Long-term (τ > 0.01 s) frequency stability and its repeatability have been improved.

We demonstrate the characterization of a horn antenna in the full F-band (90 ∼ 140 GHz) based on far-field transformation from near-field electro-optic (EO) measurement. Our nonpolarimetric self-heterodyne EO sensing system enables us to simultaneously measure the spatial distribution of the amplitude and phase of the RF signal. Because free-running lasers are used to generate and detect the RF signal, our EO sensing system has wide frequency tunability. Owing to the stable and reliable amplitude and phase measurements with minimal field perturbation, the estimated far-field patterns agree well with those of the simulated results. We have evaluated the estimation errors of the 3-dB beamwidth and position of the first sidelobe. The largest standard error of the measurements was 1.1° for 3-dB beamwidth and 3.5° for the position of first sidelobe at frequency 90 GHz. Our EO sensing system can be used to characterize and evaluate terahertz antennas for indoor communication applications such as small-size slot array antennas.

Terahertz (THz) band is an attractive candidate for future broadband (> 10 Gb/s) wireless backhaul and fronthaul. THz transmitter employing optical frequency comb can provide high quality THz carrier, and is useful to the future broadband THz communication systems based on coherent transmission technique. To realize coherent transmission, high quality carrier generation is essential and it is important to evaluate the signal quality of a THz transmitter. In this paper, we derive error vector magnitude (EVM) including optical impairments (optical amplifier noise, laser phase noise, optical crosstalk and IQ imbalance of optical modulator) of the optical frequency comb based transmitter. The calculated EVM is in good agreement with simulated one, and practical requirements for optical impairment are indicated. The analysis will be useful in the design of THz transmission systems employing an optical frequency comb.

This paper describes recent progress of photonically-enabled systems for millimeter-wave and terahertz measurement applications. After briefly explaining signal generation schemes as a foundation of photonics-based approach, system configurations for specific applications are discussed. Then, practical demonstrations are presented, which include frequency-domain spectroscopy, phase-sensitive measurement, electric-field measurement, and 2D/3D imaging.

We propose the concept of an integrated coherent photonic wireless transmitter based on the simultaneous injection locking of two monolithically integrated distributed feedback (DFB) laser diodes (LDs) using an optical frequency comb (OFC). We characterize the basic operation of the transmitter and demonstrate that two injection-locked integrated DFB LDs are sufficiently stable to generate the carrier signal using a uni-traveling-carrier photodiode (UTC-PD) for a real-time error-free (bit error rate: BER < 10-11) coherent transmission with a data rate of 10 Gbit/s at a carrier frequency of 97 GHz. In the coherent wireless transmission, we compare the BER characteristics of the injection-locked transmitter with that of an actively phase-stabilized transmitter and show that the power penalty of 8-dB for the injection-locked transmitter is due to the RF spurious components, which can be reduced by integrating the OFC generator (OFCG) and LDs on the same chip. Our results suggest that the integration of the OFCG, DFB LDs, modulators, semiconductor optical amplifiers, and UTC-PD on the same chip is a promising strategy to develop a practical real-time ultrafast coherent millimeter/terahertz wave wireless transmitter.