An SH0 lithium niobate correlator for orthogonal frequency coded spread spectrum communications

This work presents the first demonstration of a frequency correlator based on shear horizontal waves in a suspended Lithium Niobate thin film. The device consists of symmetrically arranged input and output ports, each with five sections of transducers for five transmission bands over a wide frequency range from 154 to 297 MHz. The high electromechanical coupling of Lithium Niobate provides a fractional bandwidth over 60%, outperforming the state of the art surface acoustic wave correlators with a comparable insertion loss. The correlation has been verified with time-domain measurements, showing a voltage amplification factor of 2 for a correlated input, with respect to its time reversal.