Ultrafast optics techniques for microwave/millimeter-wave arbitrary waveform generation

In this paper we review work at Purdue in which shaped optical pulses are used to drive an optical-to-electrical (O/E) converter. This leverages our femtosecond optical arbitrary waveform generation(AWG) technology to achieve generation of arbitrary voltage waveforms in the range between a few GHz and 50 GHz. A dispersive fiber is used to stretch the optical waveform duration prior to optical-to-electrical converter. The optical power spectrum is shaped using a Fourier transform pulse shaper prior to dispersive stretching.