Temporal Disentanglement of Wireless Signal Carriers Based on Quasi-Light-Storage

High-speed communication systems mandate instantaneous microwave frequency measurement for an efficient utilization of the available spectrum. We propose and experimentally demonstrate a novel, real-time microwave frequency measurement approach based on the time-frequency coherence representation of each signal. The temporal discrimination between the spectral components of the incoming microwave signal is realized through the harnessing of stimulated Brillouin scattering-based quasi light storage (QLS). The QLS is achieved by equidistant sampling of a signal spectrum. Consequently, several copies of that signal will be produced in the time domain and can be discriminated from other spectral components. By tuning the central frequency of the comb, the proposed method is fully reconfigurable and feasible for centimeter, millimeter and even THz signals. Here, we present simultaneous discrimination of single and two frequency components of multi-frequency microwave signals. Since the method can be integrated and supports real-time processing, it might become an integral part for efficient bandwidth usage in future wireless communication systems.