Photonic millimeter-wave ultrawideband signal generation using frequency upconversion based on the stimulated Brillouin scattering effect.

We present a novel and simple scheme for photonic generation of a millimeter-wave ultrawideband (UWB) signal free of low-frequency components that is implemented by using a stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS)-based frequency-doubling method. A dual-parallel Mach-Zehnder modulator is incorporated to generate appropriate optical sidebands and an optical carrier carrying the UWB signal. Then the single-sideband modulation is realized based on the successive SBS frequency shifting process. Eventually, a UWB signal is upconverted to twice the frequency of the radio frequency signal. To vindicate the feasibility of the proposed scheme, an experiment is carried out, and it turns out that a UWB signal with a bandwidth of 7 GHz is upconverted to 21.75 GHz. The spectrum of the generated signal meets well with the Federal Communications Commission mask.