Photonic-based low phase noise frequency synthesis for RF-to-millimeter wave carriers and wideband RF-to-IF down-conversion

We present a photonic method for tunable high frequency carrier generation and wideband tunable RF frequency down-conversion with low phase noise. The phase noise of the photonic generated RF/IF signal is limited by the RF signal generator used to synthesize the optical local oscillators. We show phase noise measurements of photonic frequency synthesized carriers at 24 GHz and down-conversion measurements with +24 dBm OIP3 and positive gain from 5 – 20 GHz RF and 100 MHz IF, with ADC-limited digitization.

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