Review on Photonic Generation of Chirp Arbitrary Microwave Waveforms for Remote Sensing Application

Abstract A novel technique to generate an arbitrary chirped waveform by harnessing features of lithium niobate LiNbO3$\left({{\rm{LiNb}}{{\rm{O}}_3}} \right){\rm{}}$ Mach–Zehnder modulator is proposed and demonstrated. The most important application of chirped microwave waveform is that, it improves the range resolution of radar. Microwave photonics system provides high bandwidth capabilities of fiber-optic systems and also contains the ability to provide interconnect transmission properties, which are virtually independent of length. The low-loss wide bandwidth capability of optoelectronic systems makes them attractive for the transmission and processing of microwave signals, while the development of high-capacity optical communication systems has required the use of microwave techniques in optical transmitters and receivers. These two strands have led to the development of the research area of microwave photonics. So, it should be consider that microwave photonics as the field that studies the interaction between microwave and optical waves for applications such as communications, radars, sensors and instrumentations. In this paper, we have thoroughly reviewed the arbitrary chirped microwave generation techniques by using photonics technology.