W-band inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR) imaging systems are very useful for automatic target recognition and classification due to their high spatial resolution, high penetration and small antenna size. Broadband linear frequency modulated wave (LFMW) is usually applied to this system for its de-chirping characteristic. However, nearly all of the LFMW generated in electronic W-band ISAR system are based on multipliers and mixers, suffering seriously from electromagnetic interference (EMI) and timing jitter. And photonic-assisted LFMW generator reported before is always limited by bandwidth or time aperture. In this paper, for the first time, we propose and experimentally demonstrate a high-resolution W-band ISAR imaging system utilizing a novel logic-operation-based photonic digital-to-analog converter (LOPDAC). The equivalent sampling rate of the LOPDAC is twice as large as the rate of the digital driving signal. Thus, a broadband LFMW with a large time aperture can be generated by the LOPDAC. This LFMW is up-converted to W band with an optical frequency comb. After photonic-assisted de-chirping processing and data processing to the echo, a high-resolution two-dimension image can be obtained. Experimentally, W-band radar with a time-bandwidth product (TBWP) as large as 79200 (bandwidth 8 GHz; temporal duration 9.9 us) is established and investigated. Results show that the two-dimension (range and cross-range) imaging resolution is ~1.9 cm × ~1.6 cm with a sampling rate of 100 MSa/s in the receiver.

A carrier phase-shifted (CPS) double sideband (DSB) modulation technique in radio-over-fiber (RoF) system is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. By tuning the biases in a single-drive dual parallel Mach–Zehnder modulator (SD-DPMZM), the optical carrier in the DSB spectrum acquires additional phase shift. The transmittance response of a dispersive RoF link is thus being controlled and shifted in the frequency domain. Experiments successfully turned the maximum transmission frequency to $10\mathrm{GHz}$ and $15\mathrm{GHz}$ for both 25 and $39\mathrm{km}$ fiber links. This is also a highly linear scheme, of which a spurious-free dynamic range (SFDR) of $111.3\mathrm{dB}·{\mathrm{Hz}}^{2/3}$ is experimentally obtained.

We demonstrate a novel microwave photonic filter based on a non-coherent broadband optical source and the variable optical carrier time shift (VOCTS) method. Optical slicing which is essential conventionally is not employed in our scheme. Nevertheless, equivalent “electrical slicing” is performed by VOCTS, generating a passband free from the carrier-suppression effect. The baseband response is eliminated by using carrier-suppression or phase modulation. Single bandpass is also achieved due to the continuous-time sinusoidal impulse response. Detailed theoretical analyses are presented and agree with the experiments quite well.

We present a polarization-maintaining PANDA ring-core fiber (PM-PRCF) characterized by the combination of a ring-core structure with two stress-applying rods. This special fiber design separates the adjacent modes and avoids the cutoff of the higher-order modes, which is a common problem in elliptical core polarization-maintaining few-mode fibers. Using a high-contrast index ring and stress-induced birefringence, the PM-PRCF features support for 10 vector modes, with effective refractive index separations from their adjacent modes $>{10}^{-4}$. Broadband performance is investigated subsequently over a wide wavelength range from 1500 to 1630 nm. The proposed fiber is targeted at applications in space-division multiplexing while eliminating the complex multiple-input multiple-output signal processing.

This paper reports a photonics-assisted joint radar and communication system for intelligent transportation based on an optoelectronic oscillator (OEO). By manipulating the optical multi-dimensional processing module inserted in the OEO loop, two phase-orthogonal integrated signals are generated with low phase noise and high frequency, as the communication data loaded on the overall polarity of radar pulses. At the receiver, single-channel matched filtering and two-channel IQ data fusion are utilized to retrieve the communication data and the range profile, without any performance deterioration of either. In this way, the contradiction between the performance of two functions existing in the previous scheme is solved, and the integrated performance can be further optimized as bandwidth increases. A proof-of-concept experiment with 2 GHz bandwidth at 24 GHz, which is the operating frequency of short-range automotive radar, is carried out to verify that the proposed system can meet the requirement of the intelligent vehicles in the short-range scene. A communication capacity of 335.6 Mbps, a range profile with a resolution of 0.075 m, and a peak-to-sidelobe ratio (PSLR) of 20 dB is demonstrated under the experimental condition. The error vector magnitude (EVM) curve and constellation diagrams versus received power are measured, where the EVM is −8 and −14.5 dB corresponding to a power of −14 and 6 dBm, respectively.

We propose what we believe to be a novel method to generate optical millimeter-wave signals with frequency quadrupling using two cascaded Mach–Zehnder modulators (MZMs). Both theoretical analysis and experimental demonstration are presented. By symmetrically biasing the MZMs, without any optical filters or electrical devices, a high-quality millimeter wave at 40 GHz with an optical harmonic distortion suppression ratio of more than 25 dB is obtained. Furthermore, it is also proved to be valid that the proposed scheme is insensitive to the MZM bias drift, which demonstrates a relatively higher stability.