Coherent Microwave Photonic Channelized Receiver with Low Come Line Requirement of OFC and Image Rejection Ability

A coherent microwave photonic channelized receiver based on polarization multiplexed optical frequency comb (OFC) and integrated coherent receiver (ICR) is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. It can achieve the 4n-channel channelized receiving with only need for polarization multiplexing of n-line OFCs, which significantly reduces the comb line requirement of the OFC. Meanwhile, the image interference existing in the channelized receiver is also rejected in the proposed coherent channelized receiver. A proof-of-concept experiment is conducted to verify the scheme. By polarization multiplexing of two 1-line OFCs and using the ICR, a 12-14 GHz signal is successfully divided into 4 channels with bandwidth of 1 GHz and image rejection ratio (IRR) maintains above 36.09 dB, which demonstrates that the proposed coherent channelized receiver is a good candidate for the wideband signal processing of the future radar, communication, and electronic warfare systems.