Low-Cost, Continuously Tunable, Millimeter-Wave Photonic LO Generation Using Optical Phase Modulation and DWDM Filters

We report on a low-cost technique for the photonic generation of wideband continuously tunable millimeter-wave local oscillator signals. It is based on sideband filtering using an optical phase modulator and thin-film dense wavelength- division-multiplexing filters. The generated millimeter-wave signal exhibits low phase noise, and its frequency covers the $W$ - and $F$ -bands, from 75 to 140 GHz.