Reconfigurable RF Carrier Generation in the mm-Wave Band with Silicon Photonics Circuit

Flexible generation of RF carriers in the millimeter-wave band up to the sub-THz region is demonstrated using a photonic integrated circuit realized in silicon-on-insulator technology. The circuit exploits photonic integrated filters for selecting two isolated tones out of an input optical frequency comb generated using a local oscillator (LO) at a submultiple frequency of the output RF signal. Experimental results confirm a large suppression ratio of RF spurious tones up to more than 30dB for generated carrier frequencies ranging from 40GHz to 126GHz using a maximum LO frequency of 20GHz.