Photonically assisted generation of continuous arbitrary millimetre electromagnetic waveforms

A novel optical-to-electrical technique for the generation of continuous periodic arbitrarily shaped millimetre-wave electromagnetic waveforms at centre frequencies of 50 GHz is demonstrated. Tailored optical pulse sequences from a novel direct space-to-time pulse shaper driving a high-speed photodiode enable generation of arbitrary phase- and frequency-modulated waveforms on a cycle-by-cycle basis.