LASER

& PHOTONICS
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Laser Photonics Rev. 10, No. 5, 711–734 (2016) / DOI 10.1002/lpor.201600019

Abstract As an emerging topic, photonic-assisted microwave

measurements with distinct features such as wide frequency
coverage, large instantaneous bandwidth, low frequency-
dependent loss, and immunity to electromagnetic interfer-
ence, have been extensively studied recently. In this article,
we provide a comprehensive overview of the latest advances
in photonic microwave measurements, including microwave
spectrum analysis, instantaneous frequency measurement,
microwave channelization, Doppler frequency-shift measure-
ment, angle-of-arrival detection, time–frequency analysis, com-
pressive sensing, and phase-noise measurement. A photonic
microwave radar, as a functional measurement system, is
also reviewed. The performance of the photonic measurement
solutions is evaluated and compared with the electronic solu-
tions. Future prospects using photonic integrated circuits and

ARTICLE
software-defined architectures to further improve the measure-

REVIEW
ment performance are also discussed.

Photonics for microwave measurements

Xihua Zou1,2,∗ , Bing Lu1 , Wei Pan1 , Lianshan Yan1 , Andreas Stöhr2 , and Jianping Yao3,∗

1. Introduction of various traditional functionalities [2–10], such as the

measurements of temporal waveform, power/voltage, fre-
1.1. Microwave measurements quency, spectrum, noise, scattering parameter, vector/scalar
network analysis, device characterization and calibration,
Microwave (from 300 MHz to 300 GHz [1]) theories and and remote sensing of environmental variations. In addi-
technologies have been extensively researched and widely tion, a number of new functionalities have been fulfilled by
applied for civil and defense applications. As one of the electronic solutions [9], such as real-time signal analysis,
fundamental applications, microwave measurements are multifunctional measurement, and vector network analysis
widely used in fields such as astronomy, communications, for nonlinear systems.
navigation, traffic and automotive control, electronic war- However, due to the explosive growth of data traffic,
fare, radar and warfare systems, medicine and health care, such as high-speed wireless communications (5G and be-
and appliances (e.g., microwave oven), as illustrated in yond), internet of things, new generation of radars, and
Fig. 1. In general, the performance of microwave mea- real-time services, critical challenges are bringing urgent
surements ultimately determines the characteristics of mi- demands to microwave measurements in terms of large in-
crowave techniques and systems. stantaneous bandwidth greater than 10 GHz and wide fre-
quency coverage from several megahertz to hundreds of
gigahertz, which may not be achievable using purely elec-
1.2. Electronic solutions and challenges tronic solutions or the systems are extremely complicated
and costly. Table 1 summarizes the performance specifica-
Electronic solutions are the most straightforward and still tions of some selected state-of-the-art real-time microwave
the dominant means for the implementation of microwave signal analyzers. As can be seen, the maximum real-time
measurements today. Such solutions have been widely em- bandwidth is limited only to  500 MHz, which is far lower
ployed in microwave systems to support the realization than the expected value of tens of gigahertz.

1
Center for Information Photonics and Communications, School of Information Science and Technology, Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu,
611756, China
2
Institute of Optoelectronics, University of Duisburg-Essen, Duisburg, 47057, Germany
3
Microwave Photonics Research Laboratory, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, K1N 6N5,
Canada
∗
Corresponding authors: X. Zou, zouxihua@swjtu.edu.cn; J. Yao, jpyao@eecs.uOttawa.ca
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction
in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.


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712 X. Zou et al.: Photonics for microwave measurements

strong immunity to electromagnetic interference (EMI).

Thus, photonic microwave measurement techniques have
been widely researched recently and numerous new ap-
proaches have been proposed, to address the challenges
facing electronic solutions.
Figure 2 illustrates a generic system architecture for
photonic microwave measurements. As can be seen, the
system consists of a light source, an electro-optic mod-
ulator (EOM), a photonic processing module, an optical-
to-electrical (OE) conversion module, and a post process-
ing module. The light source can be a single-wavelength
continuous-wave (CW) laser, a mode-locked pulsed laser
(MLL), an optical frequency comb (OFC), or a broadband
light source (such as an amplified spontaneous emission
Figure 1 Microwave measurements and photonic solutions.
source, ASE). The EOM can be an intensity, a phase, a po-
(EMI: electromagnetic interference). larization, or an electroabsorption modulator. A microwave
signal with its parameters to be measured is applied to the
EOM to modulate the optical carrier from the light source.
1.3. Photonics for microwave measurements The modulated optical signal carrying the microwave sig-
nal is then sent to the photonic processing module, which
As an emerging research field, microwave photonics has can be an optical comb filter, a fiber Bragg grating (FBG),
been considered as an enabling technology for the gen- an integrated resonator, or a waveguide grating filter, to
eration, distribution, control, detection and measurement perform signal processing in the optical domain. After OE
of microwave signals, as well as for the implementation conversion, the parameters of the microwave signal to be
of new devices and systems [11–27]. Among the nu- measured can be obtained in the post processing stage.
merous functionalities enabled by photonics, microwave Based on this generic system architecture, numer-
measurements based on photonics can provide superior per- ous photonic microwave measurement techniques have
formance in terms of large instantaneous bandwidth, wide been proposed. In this article, we provide a comprehen-
frequency coverage, low frequency-dependent loss, and sive overview of the photonic microwave measurement

Table 1 Specifications of selected state-of-the-art real-time microwave signal analyzers

Instrument RTSA series, Keysight FSVR series, Rohde & Schwarz RSA5000 series, Tektronix
Maximum real-time bandwidth <510 MHz 40 MHz a
165 MHz b
Frequency coverage 3 Hz–26.5 GHz 10 Hz–40 GHz 1 Hz–26.5 GHz
Minimum signal duration 3.5 μs 24 μs (40-MHz span) 2.7 μs (165-MHz bandwidth)
Resolution bandwidth 287 kHz (500-MHz span) 100 kHz c 25 kHz (165-MHz bandwidth)
Data released Apr. 2015 Mar. 2015 Aug. 2015

a
Signal analysis bandwidth
b
Real-time acquisition bandwidth or analysis bandwidth
c
Calculated with a 40-MHz span and a span to resolution bandwidth ratio of 400.

Figure 2 Generic system architecture for photonic microwave measurements. (CW: continuous-wave; MLL: mode-locked pulsed
laser; OFC: optical frequency comb; ASE: amplified spontaneous emission source; EO: electro-optic; PM: phase modulator; IM:
intensity modulator; PolM: polarization modulator; EAM: electroabsorption modulator; OE: optical-to-electrical; PD: photodetector;
UTC-PD: uni-traveling-carrier photodiode; APD: avalanche photodiode; BPD: balanced photodetector).


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 REVIEW
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Laser Photonics Rev. 10, No. 5 (2016) 713

Figure 3 Measurement func-

tionalities enabled by photonics.

techniques reported over the past few years. Different recorded point by point. Basically, an optical spectrum an-
measurement functionalities, including instantaneous fre- alyzer (OSA) embedded with a scanning grating can be used
quency, spectrum, time–frequency distribution, Doppler to analyze the spectrum of a microwave signal by provid-
frequency shift (DFS), angle-to-arrival (AOA), and phase- ing a wide frequency measurement range, for example, the
noise measurements, will be presented. System applications entire C band or even C+L band, in the optical domain. In
such as ranging and sensing will also be discussed. Figure 3 [28], an OSA was used to measure the radio-frequency (RF)
summarizes the functionalities that are implemented by spectrum of an optical signal with a record measurement
photonic microwave measurements. range over 2.5 THz. Although the frequency measurement
The remainder of this article is organized as fol- range is ultrawide [28], the resolution is very low due to the
lows. From Section 2 to Section 7, recent advances in use of a bulky free space grating, which makes it impractical
photonic microwave spectrum analysis, photonic instan- to use an OSA for microwave measurements.
taneous frequency measurement (IFM), photonics-assisted To perform microwave measurements, a solution is to
microwave channelization, photonic microwave DFS mea- scan the wavelength of a light source, as shown in Fig. 2.
surement, photonic AOA measurement, photonic time– Again, a fine tuning step should be provided to ensure a high
frequency analysis, photonic-assisted compressive sensing resolution. For a laser source with a tunable wavelength,
and photonic phase-noise measurement, are reviewed. In however, the wavelength stability during a fast scanning
Section 8, a photonic microwave radar as a functional procedure is relatively poor, which would degrade the mea-
measurement system is introduced. The results of the first surement accuracy. Thus, an effective solution is to use a
field trial and the future trend towards versatile function- laser source with a fixed wavelength, but the scanning is
alities are discussed. In Section 9, the performance of the done using a fine-tuning optical filter. Typically, the opti-
photonic measurement solutions are evaluated and com- cal filter used for scanning can be a Fabry–Pérot etalon, an
pared with the electronic solutions. Future prospects using echelle diffractive grating (EDG), an FBG or a tunable pho-
photonic integrated circuits (PICs) and software-defined tonic microwave filter [29–32]. In [29], a scanning receiver
architectures to further improve the measurement perfor- in which the scanning was performed using a Fabry–Pérot
mance are also discussed in Section 10. In Section 11, a etalon was demonstrated, providing a frequency measure-
conclusion is drawn. ment range of 40 GHz and a resolution of 90 MHz. In
[30], an electrically tunable FBG with a 54-MHz transmis-
sion bandwidth having steep slopes was utilized to analyze
the spectrum of a microwave signal, providing a frequency
2. Microwave spectrum analysis measurement range of 7 GHz, from 2 to 9 GHz. In [31],
a monolithically integrated EDG having 15 channels was
2.1. Spectrum analysis based on frequency employed to measure the spectrum of a microwave sig-
scanning nal. A resolution of 50 MHz was obtained for a frequency
measurement range from 0 to 15 GHz when monotonically
Spectrum analysis based on frequency or wavelength scan- scanning the wavelength of a channel. If all the 15 channels
ning is a powerful tool in signal measurement in either the are used, the overall measurement range can be 225 GHz.
electrical or the optical domain. In the optical domain, for In [32], a two-tap tunable photonic microwave filter us-
the generic system architecture shown in Fig. 2, the mea- ing two laser sources was employed for spectrum analysis.
surement operation is usually done by scanning the wave- When the wavelength of one laser source was tuned, a spec-
length of a light source or the transmission or reflection tral response with different free spectral ranges (FSRs) was
spectral response of an optical filter. After photodetection, generated after photodetection. Multiple microwave powers
the microwave spectrum over a wide frequency range is for different FSRs were collected to form an interferogram

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714 X. Zou et al.: Photonics for microwave measurements

2.2. Featured example

Very recently, a photonic frequency-scanning receiver us-

ing a chip-based photonic Brillouin filter was proposed for
microwave spectrum analysis. The schematic diagram is
illustrated in Fig. 4 [37]. In one path, an RF reference sig-
nal with its frequency scanning at a fixed step of 25 MHz
is fed into a dual parallel Mach–Zehnder modulator (DP-
MZM). A phase-modulated signal is generated, which is
used as a probe signal and sent to an achalgogenite (As2 S3 )
rib waveguide where the SBS will be triggered when a
pump signal is injected into the As2 S3 waveguide from
the opposite direction. Note that for this phase-modulated
optical signal, the two optical sidebands are with unequal
amplitudes but out of phase. In the other path, a microwave
signal is applied to an MZM that is biased at the minimum
transmission point for carrier suppression, providing two
first-order optical sidebands. The two optical sidebands are
amplified by an erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) and
then injected into the nonlinear As2 S3 waveguide as an SBS
pump. An SBS gain and an SBS loss spectra are simultane-
ously generated. A bandstop filter is then formed because
of the amplitude balance caused by the SBS gain and loss,
such that the output microwave power is monitored to reveal
the microwave frequency based on the frequency-to-power
mapping. A division between the two output microwave
powers measured at two adjacent frequency points of the
reference RF signal when its frequency is scanning at a step
of 25 MHz, is performed to derive a large-slope amplitude
Figure 4 Spectrum analysis system based on a scanning re- comparison function. Thus, the microwave spectrum was
ceiver using a chip-based photonic Brillouin filter: (a) experimen- measured by detecting the frequency information step by
tal setup and (b) the optical/RF spectra measured at different step, wherein a coarse estimation was first performed by
points A–E [37]. (LD, laser; OC, optical coupler; MZM, Mach–
scanning the RF reference signal and a high-precision mea-
Zehnder modulator; DP-MZM, dual-parallel MZM; EDFA, erbium-
doped fiber amplifier; ISO, isolator; PD, photodetector; vB , Bril-
surement was then implemented through the frequency-to-
louin linewidth; B , SBS frequency shift).
power mapping. In the experiment, a frequency measure-
ment range from 9 to 38 GHz was demonstrated with a
measurement error less than 1 MHz [37], thanks to the
combination of the frequency agility of a scanning receiver
and the large slope of the amplitude comparison function.
Compared with an electrical scanning receiver or an
electrical spectrum analyzer, this photonic solution is able
that was then processed by fast Fourier transform (FFT) to to circumvent the trade-off between the accuracy and the
perform microwave spectrum analysis. A fine resolution of acquisition time for a wide frequency measurement range.
15 MHz was demonstrated [32]. A 1-MHz resolution for a frequency scanning step of
In addition to the use of a tunable optical filter, a stimu- 25 MHz was obtained in tens of nanoseconds due to the
lated Brillouin scattering (SBS) gain or loss spectrum hav- large slope of the amplitude comparison function. In an
ing an ultranarrow bandwidth can also be used to perform electrical spectrum analyzer, for the same resolution a fre-
microwave spectrum analysis [33–36]. In general, the band- quency scanning step of only 1 MHz can be performed.
width of the SBS gain or loss spectrum is about 20 MHz, Thus, the use of this photonic solution can greatly reduce
thus it can be utilized to perform microwave frequency the overall measurement time [37].
analysis with a resolution of 20 MHz [33]. To further in-
crease the resolution, one may superimpose an SBS gain
spectrum with two loss spectra to reduce the bandwidth of
the SBS gain. It was reported in [34] that a reduced band- 3. Instantaneous frequency measurement
width from 20 to 3.4 MHz was achieved. Another solution
to increase the resolution is to use a polarization pulling The photonic microwave measurement techniques based on
assisted SBS and heterodyning detection. For instance, a frequency scanning are able to analyze the spectrum of a
measurement resolution as high as 1 kHz was demonstrated periodic signal or an aperiodic signal with a long time dura-
[35, 36]. tion, but are unable to capture the instantaneous frequency


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Laser Photonics Rev. 10, No. 5 (2016) 715

Figure 6 Photonic IFM system based on a complementary comb

filter pair: (a) schematic diagram of the system, (b) the comple-
mentary filter pair, and (c) the spectral responses of the comple-
mentary filter pair. (CW: continuous wave; MZM: Mach–Zehnder
modulator; PD: photodetector; PC: polarization controller; PMF:
polarization maintaining fiber; PBS: polarization beam splitter).

and the wavelength of the other carrier is aligned with one

valley of the comb response, as shown in Fig. 5b. The two
Figure 5 (a) Schematic diagram and (b) the operation principle optical signals are de-multiplexed and then sent to two pho-
of a photonic IFM system based on an optical comb filter.(CW: todetectors (PDs). Two optical powers are measured at the
continuous wave; MUX: multiplexer; MZM: Mach–Zehnder mod- output of the PDs and a power ratio between them is a func-
ulator; DE-MUX: demultiplexer; PD: photodetector). tion of the microwave frequency. Thus, by monitoring the
power ratio, the instantaneous frequency of a microwave
signal is measured. The approach was verified by an exper-
of an abrupt or a frequency-agile microwave signal. IFM is iment [38]. A frequency measurement range of 1–20 GHz
of critical importance for various applications such as radar, and a measurement error below ±200 MHz were achieved
electronic warfare and cognitive radio. Accordingly, numer- when using a comb filter (i.e., a Sagnac loop) with an FSR
ous photonic approaches have been proposed recently. In of 50 GHz. The measurement error was mainly caused by
general, photonic IFM can be realized by mapping the fre- the bias drift of the MZM and the wavelength drift of the
quency information to an optical or microwave power. The two laser sources.
power information can be measured instantaneously and The photonic approach in [38] could be simplified by
thus IFM can be realized. The frequency-to-power map- removing the second laser source when using a comple-
ping can be implemented using an optical comb filter, an mentary optical comb filter pair [39–45]. Figure 6 shows the
optical mixing unit, or a dispersive delay element. schematic diagram of such a photonic IFM system based on
a complementary comb filter pair. The filter pair was imple-
mented by employing a length of polarization-maintaining
3.1. Based on an optical comb filter fiber (PMF) in conjunction with a polarization beam split-
ter (PBS) [39]. Thanks to the two complementary spectral
By utilizing an optical comb filter, the instantaneous fre- responses, as shown in Fig. 6c, two frequency-dependent
quency of a microwave signal can be converted to an op- optical powers are detected and the power ratio (R) between
tical power through frequency-to-power mapping [38–52]. them is given by
By detecting the optical power, the instantaneous frequency
can be measured. Figure 5a illustrates such a photonic IFM 1 − r cos(2π f m /F)
R= , (1)
system using an optical comb filter [38]. A microwave sig- 1 + r cos(2π f m /F)
nal is received and applied to an MZM to modulate two opti-
cal carriers at f 1 and f 2 . The MZM is biased at the minimum where F denotes the FSR of the comb filter, f m is the in-
transmission point to achieve a carrier-suppressed double stantaneous frequency of the microwave signal, and r is the
sideband (CS-DSB) modulation. Then, the modulated op- relative peak-to-notch contrast ratio of the two complemen-
tical signals are sent to an optical comb filter that has a tary transmission responses. As can be seen from Eq. (1),
sinusoidal spectral response. The wavelength of one opti- the instantaneous frequency is independent of microwave
cal carrier is aligned with one peak of the comb response power, and can be estimated from the power ratio within the

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Figure 7 Block diagram of the pho-

tonic IFM system based on an optical
mixing unit with two orthogonal outputs.
(MZM: Mach–Zehnder modulator; FBG:
fiber Bragg grating; EDFA: erbium-doped
fiber amplifier; DE-MUX: demultiplexer;
PD: photodetector).

frequency measurement range of half the FSR. The approch a microwave signal. The root mean square (RMS) error
was verified by an experiment, showing a measurement er- was estimated to be less than 200 MHz for a frequency
ror less than ±200 MHz for a frequency measurement range measurement range between 5 and 15 GHz [50].
of 25 GHz from 1 to 26 GHz. On the other hand, an FBG with two complementary
By replacing the complementary comb pair with two slopes in its spectral response could also be used in a pho-
quadrature comb filters, the frequency measurement range tonic IFM system to ensure a good stability [51, 52].
can be further increased from half FSR to a full FSR
[42, 43].
In addition to the measurement of the instantaneous 3.2. Based on an optical mixing unit
frequency of a microwave signal, the photonic IFM sys-
tem using a comb filter can also be used to measure Optical mixing is another significant way to perform pho-
other parameters of a pulsed microwave signal. In [44], tonic IFM. A mixing between an optical signal modulated
it was reported that other parameters including the sig- by a microwave signal and its replica with a given time de-
nal amplitude, time duration, and time of arrive (TOA), lay could give rise to an optical power that is dependent of
could also be measured in addition to the instantaneous the microwave frequency. Thus, the IFM is realized by de-
frequency. The measurement errors were estimated to be tecting the output power at the output of an optical mixing
less than ±100 MHz, ±0.05 V, ±1 ns, and ±0.16 ns unit that can be implemented using two cascaded modu-
within a frequency range from 2 to 11 GHz for the in- lators [53, 54] or based on optical nonlinear effect such
stantaneous frequency, amplitude, time duration, and TOA, as four-wave mixing (FWM) [55–59]. In [53], a received
respectively. microwave signal was equally divided into two parts and
The approaches reported in [38–44] can achieve IFM applied to two cascaded MZMs, to perform optical mixing.
for both a pulsed and a CW microwave signal, but are un- An unambiguous frequency measurement range from 2.2
able to discriminate the two types of signals. Recently, a to 3 GHz was experimentally demonstrated. The small fre-
photonic approach capable of performing both IFM and sig- quency measurement range was limited by the frequency-
nal classification was proposed [45]. After the frequency- dependent transmission loss and the long time delay of the
to-power mapping implemented by two optical comple- coaxial cable used in the experiment. To increase the unam-
mentary filters, either a low-frequency alternating currency biguous frequency measurement range, a small time delay
(AC) or a direct current (DC) electrical component that can be introduced from an optical link to avoid the distor-
is frequency dependent can be generated for a pulsed or tions arising from a coaxial cable. In [54], a photonic sys-
a CW microwave signal. The frequency of a pulsed mi- tem consisting of three laser sources and three FBGs were
crowave signal is estimated from the AC component, while adopted to obtain a small time delay. As depicted in Fig. 7,
the frequency of a CW signal is measured from the DC the three FBGs centered at λ0 , λ1 and λ2 are connected
component. A successful discrimination between a CW in series to construct a two-tap transversal microwave fil-
and a pulsed microwave signal can be achieved. The fre- ter with a reference tap at λ0 . A frequency-independent,
quency measurement error was estimated to be less than lower time delay between λ1 and λ2 is obtained and hence
±80 MHz and ±100 MHz for a CW and a pulsed signal, the frequency measurement range can be extended up to
respectively, for a frequency measurement range from 5 to 10 GHz.
20 GHz. Optical mixing can also be carried out through FWM
The optical comb filters in [38–45] were implemented within a highly nonlinear fiber (HNLF) [55–59]. By de-
using discrete fiber-optic components. To improve the op- tecting the power of the idler component arising from the
eration stability, integrated optical comb filters are highly FWM effect, the microwave instantaneous frequency can be
desired for performing IFM [46–50]. For example, a mono- effectively estimated inside multiple unambiguous, piece-
lithically integrated ring-assisted Mach–Zehnder interfer- wise frequency bands, which can be combined together to
ometer with two complementary comb spectral responses offer a wide frequency measurement range up to 40 GHz
was employed to measure the instantaneous frequency of [56].


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Laser Photonics Rev. 10, No. 5 (2016) 717

the shortest one guarantees a wide unambiguous frequency

measurement range [80]. For this reason, an electronic IFM
receiver is able to achieve a fine resolution of a few mega-
hertz in a frequency measurement range of a few to tens of
gigahertz [81, 82]. As an example, an electronic frequency
measurement unit (DR058-F1 from Teledyne Defense [82])
is able to intercept a microwave signal with a frequency
range from 2 and 18 GHz, offering a nominal resolution of
1 MHz.

Figure 8 Measured microwave power fading arising from chro-

matic dispersion. 4. Photonic-assisted microwave
channelization
3.3. Based on a dispersive delay element A microwave channelizer is a device that is able to slice
the spectrum of a microwave signal into a bank of narrow
The IFM approaches can be developed by introducing a dis- channels and each channel provides a high-resolution and
persive delay element that is used to generate a dispersion- high-sensitivity measurement for a channel bandwidth in
induced microwave power fading [60–71] or to design this channel. Currently, photonic-assisted microwave chan-
a photonic microwave filter [72–77]. Since both the mi- nelizers have been developed based on space-division mul-
crowave power fading and the spectral response of a mi- tiplexing (SDM) [83,84], wavelength-division multiplexing
crowave filter are frequency dependent, the instantaneous (WDM) [85–99], and time-division multiplexing (TDM)
frequency of a microwave signal is measured by detecting [100–103].
the microwave power.
As is known, an optical double sideband signal would
suffer from a frequency-dependent power fading caused by 4.1. Based on space-division multiplexing
the chromatic dispersion of an optical link [78]. Figure 8
shows the power fading for an optical double sideband sig- Based on SDM, the frequency components of a microwave
nal traveling in a 24.6-km single mode fiber. It can be seen signal are spatially dispersed in the optical domain, to have
within a specific frequency range, the detected microwave multiple parallel and spatially separated channels. At each
power has a monotonic relationship with the instantaneous spatial channel, only a microwave signal falling inside a
frequency without ambiguity. specific frequency band can be measured at a high reso-
To make the frequency measurement independent of the lution. Such photonic microwave channelizers can be im-
microwave power, two or more frequency-dependent pow- plemented by using a free-space diffraction grating [83],
ers in two or more channels are detected and then employed an integrated optical hybrid Fresnel lens system [84], or an
to derive one or more power ratios, which are microwave acoustic-optic component, to provide angular dispersion.
power independent. For example, if two channels are em- Figure 9 shows a photonic-assisted microwave chan-
ployed, two frequency-dependent powers can be detected nelizer using a free-space diffraction grating [83]. Differ-
and the ratio between them is given by ent frequency components of the microwave signal modu-
  lated on an optical carrier are spatially dispersed and sub-
P1 1 cos2 π χ1 λ1 f m2 /c + α sequently separated in space. An OFC serving as a local
R= =  , (2)
P2 2 cos2 π χ2 λ2 f m2 /c + β oscillator (LO) beam is injected with a spatial offset to
the diffraction grating, to ensure a constant frequency dif-
where c is the light velocity in vacuum, λ1 and λ2 denote ference or fixed intermediate frequency (IF) between the
the wavelengths of the two channels. P1 and P2 , 1 and spatially overlapping signal beam and the LO beam for
2 , χ1 and χ2 are the detected microwave powers, the link performing frequency downconversion. An array of PDs is
losses, and the chromatic dispersions at the two channels, utilized to identify the spatially separated frequency com-
respectively. Here, it is worth highlighting that the phase ponents and each PD covers a specific frequency band or
shifts (α and β) of the two channels can be flexibly op- channel. An experiment was performed and all channels
timized using intensity, phase or polarization modulation were operating at a nominal 5-GHz IF band and offering
or an SBS-based signal processing module [60–71], allow- a channel resolution of 1 GHz [83], which would yield a
ing a fully tunable frequency measurement range and an total instantaneous bandwidth greater than 100 GHz.
adjustable resolution.
While in an electronic IFM receiver, the microwave in-
stantaneous frequency is measured by a number of interfer- 4.2. Based on wavelength-division multiplexing
ometric phase discriminators based on multiple delay lines
with different physical lengths [6, 79]. In such a receiver, Based on WDM, the frequency components of a microwave
the longest delay line determines the resolution, whereas signal are spectrally sliced in the optical domain, to have

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Figure 10 (a) Microwave channelizer using a spectrally sliced

incoherent source and two Fabry–Pérot etalons; (b) spectral
responses of two etalons. (ILS: incoherent light source; EOM:
electro-optic modulator; DE-MUX: demultiplexer; PD: photode-
tector; FSR: free spectral range).

Figure 9 Microwave channelizer based on space-division multi-

plexing using a free-space diffraction grating. (PD: photodetector; as shown in Fig. 10b. A WDM demultiplexer is then con-
LO: local oscillator). nected after Etalon-II to de-multiplex the multiple channels
from Etalon-II. Microwave channelization with a channel
resolution of X GHz is thus realized. The same approach
multiple parallel and spectrally separated channels. At each was also implemented by replacing the sliced incoherent
wavelength channel, only a specific frequency band can be light source with an OFC, to improve the signal quality
processed at a high resolution. In such a system, a mi- at the output of the demultiplexer and the tuning opera-
crowave signal is applied to modulate the light wave from tion of the system [90–94]. For the channelizers reported in
an ASE source, a tunable laser source, a laser array, or an [89–94], the channel resolution was mostly estimated to be
OFC, with the spectrum of a microwave signal being mul- ±2.5 GHz or ±0.5 GHz, which was limited by the band-
ticasted into a host of wavelength channels with a regular width of the used optical etalons or filters.
ITU-T channel spacing (e.g., 0.4 or 0.8 nm). By using an To enhance the channel resolution, from a few gigahertz
optical comb filter with a high fineness or a filter array with to tens of megahertz or even tens of kilohertz, channeliz-
a narrow bandwidth, only a small band of the microwave ers based on an OFC in conjunction with an inphase and
spectrum is recorded at a wavelength channel. A WDM de- quadrature (IQ) demodulator [95] or an SBS processing
multiplexer is then used to separate the wavelength channels unit [96, 97], have been proposed. Figure 11a shows the
and each channel covers a specific, small band of the spec- schematic diagram of the channelizer using an SBS pro-
trum of the microwave signal, resulting in a high channel cessing unit [96]. The configuration has two parallel paths.
resolution. In the upper path, multiple optical carriers are modulated by
A photonic-assisted channelizer can be implemented a microwave signal to be measured. In the lower path, each
using an array of EO waveguide delay lines [85], an array optical carrier is frequency shifted and spectrum shaped to
of phase-shifted FBGs [86], an integrated optical micro-ring have a rectangular profile, which are then utilized to pump
resonator [87], a Fabry–Pérot etalon, or an OFC combined a SBS element via an optical circulator to produce multi-
with a WDM demultiplexer [88–94]. ple gain channels, with each channel having a narrow and
Figure 10 shows, for instance, a photonic-assisted chan- rectangular profile. A WDM demultiplexer is connected
nelizer consisting of a spectrally sliced incoherent source after the optical circulator to separate the multiple modu-
and two Fabry–Pérot etalons (Etalon-I and Etalon-II) [89]. lated optical carriers. Consequently, an array of microwave
Here, Etalon-I is employed to carve the broadband incoher- channels is realized with a channel resolution identical to
ent light source into a multiwavelength carrier to be used for the bandwidth of the SBS gain, as shown in Fig. 10b. In
the spectrum multicast. A microwave signal to be measured addition to an improved channel resolution, the channel-
is applied to an EOM to produce a double sideband modu- izer can be controlled to have a tunable bandwidth, channel
lation at the multiple wavelengths, and Etalon-II is used to spacing and channel profile. The approach was verified by
select the optical sidebands after EO modulation. As a dif- using an experimental setup shown in Fig. 11c. The results
ference (say X GHz) is set between the FSRs (i.e., FSR1 and showed that the channelizer provided a shape factor less
FSR2 ) of the two etalons, each channel of Etalon-II cov- than 2, a tunable channel bandwidth from 40 to 90 MHz,
ers a specific frequency band of the microwave spectrum, and a programmable channel spacing from 50 to 80 MHz.


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Figure 12 Microwave channelizer based on time-division multi-

plexing using a wavelength-scanning source: (a) schematic dia-
gram and (b) operation principle. (MZM: Mach–Zehnder modula-
tor; WSS: wavelength scanning source; PD: photodetector; ADC:
analog-to-digital conversion).

quency shifting recirculating loop [100–103], to generate

multiple temporally separated time slots in series. By an-
alyzing the time slots of the obtained temporal waveform,
a TDM-based microwave channelizer can be realized at a
high resolution.
Figure 11 Photonic-assisted microwave channelizer using a Taking the microwave channelizer reported in [100] as
SBS processing unit: (a) schematic diagram, (b) operation prin- an example, it was implemented using an optical WSS.
ciple, and (c) experimental setup. (LD: laser diode; MUX: multi- As illustrated in Fig. 12a, the channelizer is comprised of
plexer; EOM: electro-optic modulator; SBS: stimulated Brillouin two paths. In the upper path, a microwave signal is ap-
scattering; DE-MUX: demultiplexer; Ch: channel; PolM: polariza- plied to an MZM. In the lower path, a WSS with a high
tion modulator; EDFA: erbium-doped fiber amplifier; MSG: mi- scanning speed is utilized to linearly shift the wavelength
crowave signal generator; AWG: arbitrary waveform generator; of the optical carrier at a given wavelength step. The two
PD: photodetector). optical signals from the two paths are combined and cou-
pled to a low-bandwidth PD for performing heterodyning
detection. As shown in Fig. 12b, only the beating compo-
Under some stringent conditions, a much higher chan- nent generated from heterodyning detection falling inside
nel resolution can be obtained by using the spatial-spectral the bandwidth of the PD can be measured such that each
(S2) material. In [98], rare-earth dopant ions were doped scanning wavelength indicates a certain microwave band.
into the S2 crystal and equivalently considered as a bank of Inside a scanning period of the WSS, the spectrum of the
narrow filters to perform microwave channelization. A res- microwave signal is temporally sliced and allocated into
olution as high as 25 kHz was achieved at the cryogenic a bank of time slots by incorporating heterodyning detec-
temperature of 4–6 K, due to the narrow optical resonances tion and wavelength scanning. Within a scanning period of
of the doped rare-earth ions at ultralow temperature. 5 μs, a 2-MHz resolution was experimentally achieved for
the measurement of a multiple-tone or a frequency-chirped
signal in a 20-GHz frequency range.
4.3. Based on time-division multiplexing Other solutions based on TDM can be implemented us-
ing coherent detection [101] or Nyquist-bandwidth detec-
Based on TDM, the spectrum of a microwave signal to be tion [102]. To extend the frequency measurement range, in
measured is mapped into the temporal domain by using [103] a frequency-to-time mapping approach based on suc-
an optical wavelength scanning source (WSS) or a fre- cessively frequency shifting the modulation sideband of an

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720 X. Zou et al.: Photonics for microwave measurements

optical signal was proposed to perform TDM-based spec-

trum measurements. A readily extended frequency mea-
surement range to 100 GHz can be achieved for the chan-
nelizer, while retaining a channel resolution of 250 MHz.
The advantage of using photonics to perform microwave
channelization is the wideband frequency measurement
range. An electronic channelizer, on the other hand, can
provide better channel resolution. In general, an electronic
channelizer is usually implemented using an analog, digital
or hybrid filter bank [2, 104–107]. The use of a hybrid filter
bank is attractive because of a simplified hardware imple-
mentation and an improved channel resolution. Taking the
bioinspired hybrid filter bank reported in [107] as an ex-
ample, an 8-channel RF filter with a channel bandwidth of
50 MHz was designed to slice the signal spectrum into 8
bands. Each band was further sliced into 8 parallel channels
at the IF channelization stage. In total, 64 channels were
formed for the channelized receiver, which had a channel
resolution of 6.25 MHz but a frequency measurement range
of only 400 MHz from 1.3 to 1.7 GHz.

5. Microwave Doppler frequency-shift

measurement

The DFS measurement plays a critical role in many ap-

plications, such as mobile communications, metrology,
medical imaging, electronic warfare, and radar systems Figure 13 Photonic DFS measurement system based on optical
[2, 4, 5, 7, 108–111]. Recently, several photonic approaches mixing: (a) schematic diagram and (b) experimental setup [112].
based on optical mixing or optical vector mixing were (LD: laser diode; EOM: electro-optic modulator; PD: photode-
proposed to perform DFS measurement [112–114], with tector; EDFA: erbium-doped fiber amplifier; TOF: tunable optical
a wider frequency coverage or frequency tuning range, as filter; PolM: polarization modulator; HER-Pol: high extinction ratio
compared with conventional electronic solutions. polarizer; MSG: microwave signal generator; PM: phase modu-
lator; ESA: electrical spectrum analyzer).

5.1. Based on photonic mixing


where f m and f m are the frequencies of the transmitted mi-
Due to a frequency shift caused by the Doppler effect, the crowave and the echo signals. Consequently, the DFS can be
mixing between a transmitted microwave signal and its echo obtained through frequency analysis of this low-frequency
signal in the optical domain would yield a low-frequency electrical signal. From Eq. (3), we can see that the resolu-
electrical signal. The DFS can be obtained by analyzing the tion is improved by a factor of 2. According to the measured
low-frequency electrical signal. DFS, for a monostatic radar with the transmitter and the
Such a photonic approach based on optical mixing was receiver installed at the same location, the corresponding
proposed by using two cascaded EOMs [112]. As shown radial velocity of relative motion can be calculated by
in Fig. 13, a replica of the transmitted microwave signal is
applied to an EOM (EOM-I) biased at the minimum trans-
mission point to modulate the optical carrier. The received fD f
echo signal is applied to a second EOM (EOM-II) to mod- v= c= c (4)
2 fm 4 fm
ulate the optical signal from EOM-I. Two optical sidebands
close to the optical carrier are generated at the output of
EOM-II and then applied to a low-speed PD where a low- where v is the radial velocity of relative motion. The DFS
frequency electrical signal could be detected. Mathemati- was experimentally measured at different frequency bands
cally, the low-frequency electrical signal with a frequency of 10, 15 and 30 GHz in [112]. In all these cases, a mea-
of  f is generated and the corresponding DFS ( f D ) is surement error was estimated to be less than 1 × 10−9 Hz
given by within a frequency shift range from –90 to +90 kHz. How-
  ever, this approach is unlikely to discriminate the direction
   of the DFS independently. To eliminate the direction ambi-
f D = f /2 =  f m − f m  /2, (3)
guity, a reference branch should be added.


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5.2. Based on optical vector mixing

For many applications it is essential to detect the DFS as

well as the direction. To meet this requirement, the opti-
cal vector mixing, which is the combination of an optical
frequency offset and a conventional optical mixing, can be
used.
In [113], a photonic DFS measurement system was de-
signed with two paths. In one path, the optical carrier is
upshifted by a specific offset of 200 MHz using an optical
frequency shift module (e.g., an acousto-optic modulator).
This frequency offset acts as a reference to discriminate a
negative DFS from a positive one. In the other path, the opti-
cal carrier is modulated by a microwave echo signal. Then,
the optical signals from the two paths are combined and
coupled into a low-speed PD to generate a low-frequency
electrical signal. By subtracting the frequency of the gener-
ated low-frequency signal from the frequency offset, both
the direction (i.e., + or −) and the DFS value (i.e., absolute
value) can be obtained. In the experiments, the measure-
ment error was estimated to be less than ±60 Hz within a
DFS measurement range from –90 to +90 kHz, for carrier
frequencies at 10, 15, and 20 GHz.
In [114], an enhanced photonic approach based on op- Figure 14 Photonic DFS measurement system based on op-
tical vector mixing was proposed in which an IQ coherent tical vector mixing: (a) schematic diagram and (b) experimen-
detection was employed. As shown in Fig. 14a, the IQ tal setup. (LD; laser diode; PC: polarization controller; CS-SSB:
carrier-suppressed single-sideband modulation; EOM: electro-
detector consists of an optical hybrid and two balanced
optic modulator; BPD: balanced photodetector; I: inphase; Q:
photodetectors (BPDs), of which at the output two low-
quadrature; OC: optical coupler; MZM: Mach–Zehnder modula-
frequency electrical signals can be detected, I (t)and Q(t). tor; PolM: polarization modulator; MSG: microwave signal gen-
The sign of the DFS can be determined by differentiating erator; EDFA: erbium-doped fiber amplifier; TOF: tunable optical
the phase relationship between I (t) and Q(t). When Q(t) is filter; ESA; electrical spectrum analyzer; OSC: oscilloscope; fD ,
delayed by π /2 with respect to I (t), a positive direction is Doppler frequency shift with positive or negative direction).
derived. Otherwise, if Q(t) is π /2 advanced with respect to
I (t), a negative sign is obtained. Thus, the microwave DFS
can be measured with a greatly improved resolution and an
unambiguous direction. Within the carrier frequency range 6. Photonic measurement of angle-of-arrival
from 10 to 38 GHz, the photonic approach was experimen-
tally validated with a measurement error less than ±5.8 Hz The AOA is an important parameter used to determine the
within a DFS range from –90 to +90 kHz, which was one propagation direction of a microwave signal and hence the
order of magnitude lower than that (i.e., ±60 Hz) reported location or position of a microwave transmitter or source in
in [113]. The resolution of the radial velocity measurement civil and defense applications. Generally, the AOA can be
was also improved by one order of magnitude. measured under two different circumstances, the far field
Electronic Doppler radars operating in CW or pulse and the near field.
mode have already been used for velocity and distance de-
tection through frequency shift or offset estimation. Such
radars can operate at different frequency bands such as 10, 6.1. Far-field AOA measurement
24, 35, 94 or 100 GHz, with a tunable frequency range
from several MHz to 9 GHz [7, 109–111]. For example, a In the far-field scenario, the distance between the source and
compact 94-GHz radar and a low-cost 100-GHz frequency- the measurement system is long and the microwave signal
modulated radar were developed for high-resolution sens- to be measured would reach all receivers or array antenna
ing, showing a frequency tuning range of 6 GHz [110] and elements in parallel or in the same direction. The AOA
9 GHz [111]. Meanwhile, a DFS of 926 Hz was estimated can be measured by detecting the delays among receiving
for detecting a target moving at 5 km h–1 . Compared with units or array antenna elements for an incident microwave
electronic Doppler radars, the operation of the photonic- signal.
assisted systems [112–114] is independent of the frequency A host of photonic approaches have been proposed and
of the microwave carrier in theory. It was also experimen- experimentally demonstrated [115–122]. In [115], a simple
tally demonstrated that these systems can provide a wider approach using a two-tap transversal photonic microwave
frequency coverage from 10 to 38 GHz. filter was proposed to measure the AOA. The two taps of

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Another photonic AOA measurement approach based on

correlative spectrum analysis and processing implemented
by using S2 materials was reported in [122]. The received
microwave signal is applied to drive two EOMs placed in
the two arms of a Mach–Zehnder interferometer, with the
microwave power spectrum and the TDOA being recorded
to the generated optical sidebands. Since the power level of
the optical sidebands is linked to the TDOA, a ratio between
the sum power and the difference power of the generated
optical sidebands can be used to calculate the AOA of a
microwave signal.
Figure 15 Schematic diagram of a photonic AOA measurement
system. (LD: laser diode; EOM: electro-optic modulator; PD: pho-
todetector).
6.2. Near-field AOA measurement
the filter are realized by using two MZMs with a time delay In the near-field scenarios, the distance between the source
between the two taps. The AOA is then estimated from the and the measurement system is short and each antenna ele-
transmission notches of this filter. In [116], a photonic ap- ment in the measurement array receives the microwave sig-
proach to estimate the AOA of a microwave signal using two nal at a different angle. The AOA or location is determined
cascaded EOMs (EOM-I and EOM-II) was proposed. As jointly by a set of hyperbolic curves with each defined via
shown in Fig. 15, the two EOMs are biased at the minimum the TDOA between every two photonic receiving units.
transmission point to suppress the optical carrier. When an Several photonic approaches to AOA measurement
incoming microwave signal is received and sent to the two or location detection have been demonstrated [123–125].
EOMs, a new optical component located at the wavelength A fiber-connected ultrawideband (UWB) sensing net-
of the optical carrier is generated, which is the sum of one work for high-resolution localization, for example, was
+1st- and one –1st-order sidebands of the optical signals demonstrated based on optical time-division multiplexing
generated from the cascade of EOM-I and EOM-II. The (OTDM) [124]. A central station and several units were
total power of the new optical component is a function of installed and connected via single-mode fibers, where a
the AOA, due to constructive or destructive interference proper time delay was specified between every two units to
resulting from AOA. Thus, detecting the optical power at map the UWB pulses received by different sensor nodes into
the carrier wavelength reveals both the AOA and the time different time slots. By using mapping approaches or geo-
difference of arrival (TDOA). Mathematically, the AOA metric techniques, the target location was estimated with a
(i.e., θ ) is given by spatial resolution as high as 3.9 cm for two-dimensional
(2D) localization in an experiment. An improved fiber-
θ = cos−1 (τ c/d), (5) connected network for localizing both pulsed and non-
pulsed microwave signal sources was designed based on
where τ is the TDOA which is proportional to d, the dis- WDM [125]. The TDOAs were detected at a few sensing
tance between the two antenna elements connected to the nodes allocated with different optical carriers and then uti-
two EOMs. The two EOMs in the system in [116] could lized to define a set of hyperbolic curves for identifying the
be replaced by a single dual-electrode MZM [117] or DP- location of the source. A spatial resolution less than 17 cm
MZM [118], for implementing DFS measurement. An array was experimentally achieved for localizing a WiFi signal
of integrated optical ring resonators (ORR) was employed source.
for AOA or radiation pattern measurement in [119], pro- Numerous electronic solutions have been proposed for
viding an instantaneous bandwidth of 500 MHz or wider. AOA estimation or direction finding, capable of reaching
The photonic AOA measurement can be facilitated by a resolution of ±1° based on phase comparison [5]. In
advanced system theories or intelligent algorithms, such these electronic solutions, a uniform/nonuniform linear ar-
as the robust symmetrical number system (RSNS) [120], ray, a circular array, or a rectangular array can be used.
the neuronal algorithm [121], and the correlative spectrum Meanwhile, advanced signal processing algorithms, such
analysis [122]. Assisted by a photonic RSNS technique, as the root-multiple signal classification (Root-MUSIC) al-
a system to achieve unambiguous AOA measurement was gorithm and the maximum-likelihood algorithm, can also
demonstrated with a finer spatial resolution and a smaller be employed for accuracy enhancement [126–128]. For in-
array size, than using a conventional linear array. The neu- stance, a direction-finding system using an 8-element cir-
robiological learning algorithm (spike timing dependent cular array was demonstrated with an RMS accuracy of
plasticity, STDP) realized by cooperatively using the cross- 1.2° [128]. In addition, an electronic commercial direc-
gain modulation (XGM) and the nonlinear polarization ro- tion finder (Rohde&Schwarz DDF550) is capable of of-
tation in a semiconductor optical amplifier also powered fering an RMS accuracy better than 1°, while covering a
the AOA measurement and the three-dimensional (3D) lo- frequency range from 300 kHz to 6 GHz. The advantages of
calization with an accuracy of tens of centimeters [121]. using photonic approaches are the large bandwidth and the


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fiber-based remote architecture, which cannot be achieved frequency-modulated pulse, and a pulse stream were ac-
using the state-of-the-art electronics. quired and reconstructed faithfully in an experiment.

7. Photonic measurements of other signal 7.3. Phase-noise measurement

parameters
High-performance phase-noise measurement [144–148] is
indispensable for designing and fabricating low phase-noise
7.1. Time–frequency analysis microwave sources that are essential in virtually all elec-
tronic systems. By introducing a long time delay in the
Recently, a few photonic approaches have also been devel- optical domain and performing optical mixing between the
oped to perform time–frequency analysis based on Fourier original and the delayed signals, the phase information can
transform, short-time Fourier transform (STFT), wavelet be extracted. A photonic measurement system based on this
transform, or Fourier cosine transform [129–131]. In prin- technique is capable of providing a wideband measurement
ciple, the time–frequency analysis of a microwave signal with a high sensitivity.
can be done by first slicing the signal and shaping it using In [147], a photonic approach to phase-noise measure-
an optical filter and then converting it to the frequency do- ment using a multifunctional microwave photonic proces-
main using a dispersive element such as a dispersive fiber sor was demonstrated. Thanks to the use of the microwave
or a chirped FBG. photonic processor, the EO conversion, photonic time de-
In [129], a photonic STFT was realized using a tem- lay, and phase control of the output microwave signal can
poral pulse-shaping system consisting of an array of lin- be simultaneously realized, relieving the requirement on an
early chirped FBGs, with each FBG serving as a dispersive accurate phase control over a large bandwidth for phase-
element for a particular time window to perform a real- noise measurement. The operation was validated by an ex-
time Fourier transform. In [130], a 2D array of linearly periment in which the phase-noise measurement for a fre-
chirped FBGs was employed to implement wavelet trans- quency range from 5 to 40 GHz was demonstrated with a
form, such as the Mexican hat wavelet. A photonic Fourier low phase-noise floor, such as -130 dBc Hz–1 @ 10 kHz off-
cosine transform was also successfully performed with the set at 10 GHz [147]. More recently, a configuration based
assistance of a two-tap photonic microwave filter [131]. on photonic downconversion was proposed and experimen-
tally demonstrated [148]. The phase-noise measurement for
a frequency range from 5 to 40 GHz with a nearly constant
7.2. Compressive sensing for a spectrally phase-noise floor over the entire range was demonstrated.
For example, the phase-noise floor was measured to be –
sparse signal 123 dBc Hz–1 @1 kHz offset or –137 dBc Hz–1 @ 10 kHz
offset at 10 GHz [148].
The compressive sensing (CS) is a technique developed to For phase-noise measurement, commercial instruments
reduce the sampling rate for the measurement of a spectrally based on electronics are readily available, such as Keysight
sparse signal [132]. In recent years, a number of photonic- E5052B and Rohde&Schwarz FSWP50. Taking the latter as
assisted CS approaches have been proposed [133–143]. In an example, it combines a low-noise internal source and the
a photonic-assisted CS system, the random modulation, cross correlation technology to ensure a high sensitivity for
demodulation, or measurement is realized by applying a phase-noise measurement within a frequency range from 10
pseudorandom binary sequence (PRBS) to interact with the MHz to 50 GHz. A phase-noise level of –147 dBc Hz–1 or
microwave signal in the optical domain. –127 dBc Hz–1 @ 10 kHz offset can be provided at 10 GHz,
As an example, in [139] a wideband analog-to-digital when using cross correlation or not, which will inevitably
convertor (ADC) based on photonic CS was reported with increase as the microwave frequency grows. Hence, the
a sampling rate far below the Nyquist rate of the original photonic measurement approaches [147, 148] are able to
signal. In the system, a microwave signal with a sparse provide a competitive performance in terms of phase-noise
spectrum is slowed down in the time domain by using a floor, with a nearly constant value over a frequency range
photonic time stretcher. The signal is then downsampled of 35 GHz, from 5 to 40 GHz.
and reconstructed by a photonic CS module based on ran-
dom demodulation. In [142], a photonic system was utilized
for acquiring a radar signal. A random measurement ma-
trix is first generated to compress the spectrum of the radar 8. Functional measurement system:
signal. Then, the radar signal modulated on the optical car- photonic microwave radars
rier is optically mixed with a PRBS signal by incorporating
an IQ modulator and a PD with a bandwidth of 10 GHz. In addition to the photonic measurements to microwave sig-
The output signal from the PD is processed by a low-pass nal parameters, functional measurement systems enabled
filter and then by an offline digital signal processor to re- by photonics have been considerably developed within re-
cover the radar signal. With the assistance of the sliding cent years, such as fully photonics-based coherent radars for
window-based algorithm, a rectangular pulse, a linear remote ranging, positioning and imaging [24,26,149–153].

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sampled and directly digitized with very low time jitters.

Assisted by multiple low-speed electrical ADCs and a
post digital signal-processing stage, high performance was
achieved for a photonic microwave radar in the field trial.
According to the results obtained from the field trial,
the photonic radar outperforms the state-of-the-art elec-
tronic radars at a carrier frequency above 2 GHz. Key
specifications of the photonic radar were shown in Table
1 of [24], including a tunable carrier frequency up to 40
GHz, a signal/sampling jitter less than 10 fs, and a 7-bit
effective number for the carrier frequency up to 40 GHz.
When operating at 9.9 GHz, the photonic radar provided a
range resolution of 150 m for a target distance of 5.5 km
and a resolution of 2 km h–1 for a target radial velocity of
96 km h–1 .

8.2. Photonic radars with versatile

functionalities

Furthermore, radar systems with versatile functionalities

are expected for diverse applications. The architecture pro-
posed in [24] can be upgraded to provide versatile func-
tionalities, such as multiband and multiwaveform systems
for providing multispectral imaging, long-range target de-
tection and tracking. In [149], a dual-band transceiver op-
erating in the X- and S-bands was designed and validated
for the detection of moving targets. Another field trial was
carried out to detect both cooperating and noncooperating
Figure 16 Fully photonics-based coherent radar. (DSP: digital targets in the maritime scenario in [150]. From those re-
signal processing; RF: radio frequency) (reprinted from [24] with sults, it is further expected that a multispectral observation
copyright permission). and a resolution improvement can be realized by gathering
information from different bands or by data fusion.
An innovative coherent radar-lidar architecture has also
8.1. A fully photonics-based radar been proposed to provide versatile functionalities. For ex-
ample, an architecture for integrating a photonic radar (e.g.,
For conventional electronics-based radars, most digital and X-band and Ku-band) and a lidar with a tunable tone sepa-
microwave components used today face inherent electronic ration was designed [151] and [152], characterized by the
speed limitations and large noises at high frequencies, par- manifold advantages from both radar and lidar. Experimen-
ticularly the frequency synthesizers and the ADCs. In con- tally, different tone separations or spacings of 10, 40, 80,
trast, photonics enables microwave processing and mea- or 160 GHz were specified for velocity measurement. A
surements with high speed or large bandwidth. photonic radar operating at much higher frequency (e.g.,
To transfer these distinct advantages of photonics into 250 GHz [153]) was also proposed, which is very attractive
a functional measurement system, a fully photonics-based for niche sensing applications.
coherent radar was firstly demonstrated in [24], where a
photonic transceiver using a shared MLL was designed for
generating the transmitting microwave signal and for sam- 9. Discussions
pling the echo signal. As illustrated in Fig. 16, the photonic
radar consists of a laser module, a transmitter module, a 9.1. Advantages
receiver module, a digital processing module, and an RF
frontend. The laser module provides a shared MLL with According to the discussions given in Sections 1–7, pho-
intrinsic high stability in phase and amplitude. In the pho- tonic microwave measurement techniques do have notable
tonic transmitter module, two comb lines from the MLL are advantages including large instantaneous bandwidth, wide
selected, one being modulated by a baseband radar signal frequency coverage, low frequency-dependent loss and im-
and the other being frequency shifted. After optical hetero- munity to EMI, thanks to the intrinsic features offered
dyning, a microwave signal with a high-quality microwave by photonics. When it comes to the system design, other
carrier up to tens of gigahertz and an arbitrary temporal distinct features including remote distribution via optical
waveform carried by the microwave carrier is generated. fiber and parallel processing based on WDM are also im-
At the photonic receiver, the high-frequency echo signal is pressive.


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Here, we would like to clarify in more detail concern-

Precision of velocity measurement: 0.3 m s−1 in S-band and 0.08 m s−1 in X-band
ing the large instantaneous bandwidth and wide frequency

@ 9.9 GHz: a distance error of 100m and a radial velocity error of 1 km h−1
coverage. As for the real-time or instantaneous frequency
measurement, photonic approaches based on optical comb
filters are capable of achieving a large instantaneous band-

±100 MHz and ±80 MHz for a pulsed and a CW signal

width greater than 20 GHz [38–45]. As can be seen from
Table 1, however, the analysis bandwidth of today’s real-
time microwave signal analyzers is likely to be limited to
500 MHz. As for frequency coverage, photonic measure-
ment solutions can scan over a frequency range greater

Resolution or accuracya
than 1 THz in principle, without any limit on the fre-

±3.1°@ 12.5 GHz

±2.5°@ 18 GHz
quency tuning or frequency multiplication of a LO sig-

±200 MHz

±100 MHz
318.9 MHz
±1 MHz

125 kHz
90 MHz

±60 Hz
nal used for heterodyning detection in electrical solutions.

2 MHz
In a state-of-the-art microwave spectrum analyzer such as
Rohde&Schwarz FSW85, the upper limit of the frequency
range is 85 GHz. Also, the photonic DFS measurement
approaches [112–114] are totally independent of the fre-
quency of the microwave carrier, providing a frequency cov-
erage or a frequency tuning range greater than 100 GHz in
theory and an experimentally validated measurement range
from 10 to 38 GHz. Table 2 summaries the performance
specifications of a few selected photonic microwave mea-
surement systems.

9.2. Disadvantages

Like current challenges against widespread applications of

or measurement coveragea
Instantaneous bandwidth

microwave photonics reviewed in [154], there are still crit-

S-band and X-band

Table 2 Specifications of selected photonic systems to microwave measurements

3.75  7.25 GHz

ical disadvantages to photonic microwave measurements
0.0440 GHz
Up to 40 GHz

Up to 30 GHz

Up to 40 GHz
−160° to 40°
938 GHz
126 GHz
520 GHz

040 GHz

020 GHz
of practical interest, which are mainly associated with the
5° to 165°
resolution, stability and sensitivity.
First, the frequency of an optical carrier (e.g., 190 THz)
is several orders of magnitude higher than that of a mi-
crowave carrier (e.g., 20 GHz), indicating that basically
the resolution in the optical domain is approximate 10 000
times poorer than that in the microwave domain. It is evi-
dent that the resolution is limited to be 0.01 nm (i.e., 1.25
GHz [28]) when an OSA is used for spectrum analysis, de-
Instantaneous frequency measurement
Instantaneous frequency measurement

Instantaneous frequency measurement

Instantaneous frequency measurement

Doppler frequency shift measurement

spite a frequency measurement range of 2.5 THz or wider.

Scanning spectrum analysis
Scanning spectrum analysis

Microwave channelization
Microwave channelization

In most photonic measurement solutions, therefore, the res-

Angle-of-arrival detection
Angle-of-arrival detection

olution has been improved at the cost of a reduction in the

Photonic radar
Photonic radar

frequency coverage. As shown in Table 2, a resolution from

Functionality

hundreds of megahertz to several megahertz is regarded as

within one unambiguous/monotonic range

an excellent value in the optical domain, but an unfavorable

one in the electrical domain.
The resolution or accuracy can be further improved in
photonic approaches for IFM, however, it is still at the
level of tens or hundreds of megahertz within a wide and
unambiguous frequency measurement range, according to
the experimental results obtained from a large number of
photonic approaches. However, in electronic solutions, the
achievable resolution is 1 MHz for IFM receivers, tens of
[112, 113], 2015

kilohertz or less for real-time microwave signal analyzers,

[116], 2012
[117], 2014

[100], 2013

[149], 2015

or 0.1 Hz for microwave spectrum analyzers operating in the

[29], 1999
[37], 2016
[39], 2009
[45], 2013
[58], 2014
[59], 2015

[95], 2012

[24], 2014
Reference

scanning mode. Such disadvantages or limitations outlined

in several selected papers are also shown in Table 2 for a
clear comparison.
a

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 LASER
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726 X. Zou et al.: Photonics for microwave measurements

Secondly, the operation stability is usually sensitive to pigtails, which might be considered as bulky, susceptible,
the wavelength drift of lasers and the susceptibility of pho- and power consuming, while lacking flexibility in some
tonic devices in ambient environments. If no stabilization scenarios. Fortunately, like electronic integrated circuits,
control is used, for example, there will be some wave- PICs have been developed to provide promising solutions
length drifts from hundreds of hertz to hundreds of mega- to overcome these limitations. By consolidating many ele-
hertz in commercial laser sources. Such drifts even less ments or units on a chip or in a package, PICs considerably
than 10 MHz would bring crucial performance degradation facilitate operational stability, compact footprint, and low
to microwave processing and measurements both in ampli- power consumption.
tude and in phase, despite little degradation on conventional Recently, both for general-purpose microwave photon-
WDM communications. ics systems and photonic microwave measurement systems,
Thirdly, the relatively weak sensitivity might also be some onchip devices and systems based on PICs have been
regarded as an obstacle against practical applications. Basi- demonstrated, which can be categorized into several major
cally, EO modulation and OE conversion are needed during materials or technologies including InP, GaAs, polymer,
the procedure of photonic microwave measurements, which LiNbO3 , silica, silicon-on-insulator (SOI), Si3 N4 /SiO2 ,
would severely degrade the sensitivity because of low mod- and As2 S3 [15, 19, 28, 37, 46–50, 59, 77, 155–163]. Multiple
ulation/conversion efficiency and high nonlinear noises. laser sources, modulators, amplifiers, couplers, resonators,
Those disadvantages above primarily arise from the gratings, and PDs can be integrated on a monolithic chip
premature technology level of photonic microwave mea- of the size of a square millimeter or less. As an example, a
surements. On the one hand, currently, limited elements, photonic microwave channelizer comprised of active inte-
unsophisticated architectures and simple post signal pro- grated filters was fabricated on a single chip on InP wafer
cessing are employed for implementing photonic mi- with a size of 9 mm for coupler separation [163], with the
crowave measurements. On the other hand, as a mature assistance of microelectronic processing techniques. Inte-
technology, electronic solutions use complicated cascaded/ grated lenses, resonators, and nonlinear waveguides have
parallel systems and powerful digital post signal processing also been employed to perform spectrum analysis and IFM
and thus provide high resolution and impressive sensitivity. [31,37,46–50, 59,77]. Table 3 shows a few microwave mea-
Three examples are selected to clarify this point as follows. surement systems based PICs to present the functionalities,
First, for the electronic IFM, a host of phase discriminators key components and materials used.
based on many delay lines work together for offering both
larger frequency coverage and finer resolution [5,6,79–82],
rather than only one or two phase discriminators in photonic
approaches. Secondly, two stages or more are designed for 10.2. Software-defined solutions for photonic
electronic channelizers, such as an RF, an IF, and a digital microwave measurements
channelization stages [106, 107], capable of offering fine
resolution over a relatively large frequency range. More- With the rapid development of PICs, software-defined so-
over, advanced algorithms and digitalized means have been lutions are regarded as another emerging technology for
widely utilized for the electronic microwave measurements, performing microwave measurements, like the software-
which further enhance the resolution, sensitivity, and sta- defined radio widely developed to implement multiservice,
bility. multistandard, multiband or programmable systems based
on shared and simplified hardware [164]. Therefore, the
system complexity and the SWaP-C (size, weight, power,
10. Future prospects and cost) will be dramatically reduced.
For this reason, software-defined solutions are really de-
Both notable advantages and critical disadvantages of pho- sirable for microwave photonics and photonic microwave
tonic microwave measurements have been discussed in Sec- measurements. In [165], a programmable photonic mi-
tion 9. For future prospects, first, the challenges regarding crowave filter fabricated on a monolithic chip was reported.
the resolution, stability and sensitivity, should be addressed Software-defined photonic transceivers and radars have also
by great efforts to pave the way for widespread applica- been developed to support multiple frequency bands and
tions. More importantly, there are other impactful techni- to provide multiple resolutions or multiple functionalities
cal prospects for performing photonic microwave measure- [149, 166–170], which indicate an innovative breakthrough
ments, such as the PICs and software-defined solutions. for new-generation radar. Software-defined satellite pay-
loads based on microwave photonics are becoming attrac-
tive and highly feasible for future [171]. Very recently,
for general-purpose applications, software-defined proces-
10.1. Photonic integrated circuits for microwave sor architecture [172] and programmable processor chips
measurements [173, 174] are reported for signal processing and measure-
ments. In brief, software-defined solutions are expected to
To date, most of the photonic microwave approaches and greatly facilitate photonic microwave measurements and
systems are implemented using discrete optoelectronic microwave photonics with low complexity and flexible re-
components and devices connected by waveguides or fiber configurability in diverse applications.


C 2016 The Authors. Laser & Photonics Reviews published by Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA Weinheim. www.lpr-journal.org
 REVIEW
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Laser Photonics Rev. 10, No. 5 (2016) 727

Silica on silicon
11. Conclusions

InGaAsP–InP

Si3 N4 /SiO2

Si3 N4 /SiO2
Material

Silicon
Silicon
As2 S3

InP
In this article, we have provided a comprehensive overview
of recent advances in photonic microwave measurements,
including microwave spectrum analysis, instantaneous fre-
quency measurement, microwave channelization, DFS
measurement, AOA detection, phase-noise measurement,
and microwave sensing and ranging (e.g., radar). The per-
formance of photonic solutions was then discussed with
both advantages and disadvantages, compared with that of
conventional electronic measurement solutions.

Optical ring resonator and Mach–Zehnder interferometer

Photonic microwave measurement techniques provide
superior performance in terms of instantaneous bandwidth,
Ring-assisted Mach–Zehnder interferometer

Integrated Fabry–Pérot and Fresnel lens

frequency coverage, and frequency-dependent loss. How-
Integrated echelle diffractive grating

ever, the resolution, stability, and sensitivity are rela-

tively poorer, which is mainly caused by the use of dis-
Nonlinear rib waveguide

Silicon strip waveguide

Optical ring resonator

Microdisk resonator

crete photonic components, simple post signal processing

Key component

units or algorithms, and relatively unsophisticated architec-

tures.
An enabling solution to enhance the resolution, stabil-
ity, and sensitivity is to implement the photonic microwave
measurement systems using PICs. The fast advancement in
PICs, especially the recent development in silicon photon-
ics, would allow photonic microwave measurement systems
to operate with not only a broad bandwidth and low loss,
but also favorable resolution, high sensitivity and excellent
stability. Then, the software-defined architecture based on
PICs would further facilitate photonic measurement func-
tionalities with low complexity and flexible reconfigura-
bility. These trends will make photonic microwave mea-
surement techniques a practical solution for widespread
applications in the foreseeable future.
Instantaneous frequency measurement
Instantaneous frequency measurement
Instantaneous frequency measurement
Instantaneous frequency measurement

Acknowledgments. X. Zou would like to thank Prof. Hao Chi

Scanning spectrum analysis
Scanning spectrum analysis

Microwave channelization
Angle-of-arrival detection

(Zhejiang University), Dr. Chao Wang (University of Kent), Prof.

Yitang Dai (Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications),
Table 3 Selected microwave measurement systems based on PICs

Prof. Shilong Pan (Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astro-

Functionality

nautics), Prof. Ming Li (Institute of Semiconductor, CAS), Prof.

Wangzhe Li (Institute of Electronics, CAS), and Hengyun Jiang
(Southwest Jiaotong University) for help and discussions.
X. Zou would also like to thank Dr. Mark Pelusi (University of
Sydney) for providing some materials.
The work was supported in part by the National High
Technology Research and Development Program of China
(2015AA016903), the “973” Project (2012CB315704), the
National Natural Science Foundation of China (61378008,
61101053), SYSTF (2015JQ0032), and the Fundamental Re-
search Funds for the Central Universities (2682016ZY04). Zou
was supported by the Research Fellowship of the Alexander von
Humboldt Foundation, Germany.
[161], 2010; [119], 2012

Received: 18 January 2016, Revised: 12 May 2016,

[46], 2010; [47], 2013
[48], 2011; [49], 2013

Accepted: 15 June 2016

Published online: 19 July 2016
Key words: microwave measurements, microwave photonics,
[31], 2009
[37], 2016

[59], 2015
[77], 2015
[84], 2006
Reference

radar, photonic integrated circuits, software-defined radio.

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 LASER
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728 X. Zou et al.: Photonics for microwave measurements

Xihua Zou is a Professor with the Cen- Jianping Yao is a Distinguished Uni-
ter for Information Photonics and Com- versity Professor and University Re-
munications, Southwest Jiaotong Uni- search Chair in the School of Elec-
versity, China. He received the Ph.D. trical Engineering and Computer Sci-
degree from Southwest Jiaotong Uni- ence, University of Ottawa, Canada.
versity, China, in 2009. Since Octo- With over 510 refereed publications, he
ber 2014, he has been working as a has made seminal contributions to Mi-
Humboldt Research Fellow in the In- crowave Photonics, including photonic-
stitute of Optoelectronics, University of assisted microwave signal generation
Duisburg-Essen, Germany. He was a and microwave arbitrary waveform gen-
visiting researcher and a joint training Ph.D. student in the eration, microwave signal processing,
Microwave Photonics Research Laboratory, University of Ot- photonic integrated circuits for ultrafast signal processing,
tawa, Canada, in 2011 and 2007–2008. His research interests and fiber-wireless communications. Prof. Yao is a Fellow of
include microwave photonics, radio over fiber, and optical com- the IEEE, the Optical Society of America, and the Canadian
munications. Academy of Engineering.

Bing Lu received the B.S. degree from

the Zhoukou Normal University, China,
in 2010. He is currently working toward
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