All-optical microwave waveform transformation based on photonic temporal processors

An all-photonic approach of microwave waveforms generation and transformation is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. From the perspective of envelope function operation in time domain, an initial triangular waveform is transformed into square waveform and sawtooth (or reversed-sawtooth) waveform via two types of differentiators, respectively. In addition, by using a SOA as a multiplier, both bright and dark parabolic pulses are achieved, which are further transformed into sawtooth (or reversed-sawtooth) waveform by taking the first derivative operation. The feasibility of the system is verified by theoretical analysis and simulation. In experiment, all of the expected results are successfully demonstrated and agree with the theoretical analysis well. This scheme provides a novel access to implement all-optical microwave waveforms generation, transformation, signal processing and computing. (C) 2022 Optica Publishing Group under the terms of the Optica Open Access Publishing Agreement