Optical auxiliary broadband microwave instantaneous frequency measurement method and device
Technical Field
The invention relates to the fields of microwave detection, microwave photonics and radar, in particular to an optical-assisted broadband microwave instantaneous frequency measurement technology.
Background
Modern wars have become electronic wars to some extent, wherein radars play a great role, and if the frequency parameters of signals transmitted by enemy radars can be rapidly acquired, the electronic wars can become one of the key factors for controlling the success or failure of the war. Although the conventional electronic instantaneous frequency measurement receiver can measure the instantaneous frequency of a signal with a duration of 5ns or less (b.zhang, x.wang, and s.pan, "Photonics-based instant multi-parameter measurement of a linear frequency modulation microwave signal," Journal of Lightwave Technology, vol.36, No.13, pp.2589-2596,2018, "m.pagani et.," Low-and branched microwave Technology and microwave frequency measurement in a silicon chip, "optical, vol.2, No.8, pp.751-756,2015"), the electronic system faces the complicated electromagnetic environment, and is difficult to realize the bottleneck measurement of large bandwidth in real time, and cannot meet the requirement of modern electronic war.
By means of the advantages of large bandwidth, low loss, electromagnetic interference resistance and the like, the rapid development of the microwave photon technology provides possibility for the improvement of the performance of the receiver, and an instantaneous frequency measurement scheme based on the photon technology becomes a research hotspot in recent years. Typical implementations include those based on frequency-to-microwave power mapping (C.Yang, W.Yu, and J.Liu, "configurable insulation from frequency dependent Measurement system based on a polarization multiplexing modulator", IEEE Photonics Journal, vol.11, No.1, pp.1-11,2019.) or the principles of frequency-to-optical power mapping (J.Li, L.Pei, T.G.Ning, J.J.Zheng, Y.J.Li, and R.S.He, "Measurement of insulation from microwave emission dependent Measurement based on polarization, Journal of light Technology, vol.38, No.8, pp.85-22912020).
But in general, the frequency-to-microwave power mapping scheme requires a high-speed photodetector, which greatly increases the cost of the system; the direct current component obtained by the frequency-to-optical power mapping scheme through direct analysis is difficult to avoid direct current and low-frequency noise interference. The invention discloses an optical auxiliary broadband microwave instantaneous frequency measuring method and device, which can avoid direct current and low-frequency noise interference and obtain a system with high response speed, simple structure and low cost.
Disclosure of Invention
In view of the significant advantages of microwave photon technology, the present invention aims to provide an optical-assisted method for measuring and analyzing the instantaneous frequency of broadband microwaves, which needs to modulate microwave signals intercepted by a radar onto light waves, generate an amplitude comparison function only related to the frequency of the microwave signals to be measured through a certain light path structure, and further obtain the frequency of the signals to be measured, thereby realizing high-precision instantaneous frequency measurement in a broadband range.
The object of the present invention is achieved by the following means.
An optical auxiliary broadband microwave instantaneous frequency measurement method and device mainly comprise a continuous laser source, a carrier suppression type single-side band modulation module, a Mach-Zehnder interferometer, an acousto-optic modulator and two low-speed photoelectric detectors. The processing steps are as follows: continuous light emitted by a laser firstly enters a carrier suppression type single-sideband modulation module to be modulated by a received radio frequency signal to be detected, and a generated single-sideband optical signal is divided into two branches through a coupler; the upper branch optical sideband enters a Mach-Zehnder interferometer to obtain two port outputs of complementary filtering; the lower branch enters an acousto-optic modulator to enable the central frequency to generate fsThe offset of (a); the frequency shift amount can flexibly select a nonzero positive value number between MHz and hundred MHz orders according to actual requirements; the outputs of the two branches are merged and enter two low-speed photodetectors, and the beat frequency generates a carrier frequency fsThe radio frequency signal of (a); and comparing the amplitudes of the two radio frequency signals to obtain an amplitude comparison function, and inferring the frequency of the microwave signal to be detected.
By the method of the invention, the frequency information of microwave signals in different frequency bands is converted into carrier frequency fsThe amplitude information of the radio frequency signal avoids the use of a high-speed photoelectric device and effectively avoids direct current and low voltageThe interference of frequency noise effectively improves the measurement precision of the instantaneous frequency of the broadband microwave signal.
It is also an object of the invention to provide a core device for the implementation of the above method.
An optical auxiliary broadband microwave instantaneous frequency measuring device is composed of a continuous laser source 10, a carrier suppression type single-sideband modulation module 20, a first optical coupler 30, a second optical coupler 31, a third optical coupler 32, a fourth optical coupler 33, a Mach-Zehnder interferometer 40, an acousto-optic modulator 50, a first low-speed photoelectric detector 60, a second low-speed photoelectric detector 61 and an electric processing module 70; the continuous light emitted from the laser source 10 first enters a carrier suppression type single-sideband modulation module 20, which is composed of an electro-optical modulator 201 and a band-pass filter 202 in sequence; the frequency of the received RF signal is fmThe carrier-suppressed double-sideband modulation is performed on the optical carrier in the electro-optical modulator 201, and then only a single first-order optical sideband is obtained after the carrier-suppressed double-sideband modulation is filtered by the band-pass filter 202, and the single optical sideband is divided into two branches by the coupler 30; the upper branch optical sideband enters a Mach-Zehnder interferometer 40 to obtain two-port output signals A and B of complementary filtering; the lower branch optical sideband passes through the acousto-optic modulator 50 to generate fsAt a light wave frequency fc+fsAnd then split into signals C and D via coupler 32; the upper branch output signal a and the lower branch output signal C are merged into the low-speed photodetector 60 through the coupler 31, and similarly, the upper branch output signal B and the lower branch output signal D are merged into the low-speed photodetector 61 through the coupler 33; beat frequency generating carrier frequency of fsThe frequency of the microwave signal to be measured is deduced by comparing the amplitudes of the two obtained radio frequency signals.
The specific implementation process is as follows: continuous light emitted by a laser firstly enters a carrier suppression type single sideband modulation module to be modulated by a received radio frequency signal to be detected, and under small signal modulation, a generated single sideband optical signal can be expressed as:
wherein t is a time variable, E0Is the electric field amplitude of the optical carrier, beta is the modulation index of the electro-optic modulator 201, fcIs the frequency of the laser source, fmRepresenting the frequency of the received microwave signal to be measured. And then the optical sideband is divided into two paths through a coupler, an upper branch enters the Mach-Zehnder interferometer, the position of the optical carrier is arranged to be aligned with one wave peak or wave trough in the inherent complementary transmission response of the Mach-Zehnder interferometer, and two-port output of complementary filtering is obtained after delay interference is realized. Assuming that the loss of each arm of the mach-zehnder interferometer is negligible and the coupling coefficient of the two arms is set to 0.5, the optical signals of the two output ports of the mach-zehnder interferometer can be expressed as:
here phi1、φ2The additional phase frequency shift quantity introduced by two arms of the Mach-Zehnder interferometer is indicated, and the following expression is obtained by simplifying the formula (2):
the phase difference introduced by the two arms can be expressed as
Equation (3) can be expressed as:
where λ is the wavelength of the light wave, n is the effective refractive index of the fiber, and Δ L is the difference in length between the two arms. The time delay, which can be derived from the transfer function properties of the mach-zehnder interferometer, is:
c is the propagation speed of light in vacuum, equation (4) can be expressed as:
emitting the lower branch optical sideband signal into an acoustic-optical modulator to generate fsAmount of frequency shift of (a), wherein fsIn the order of MHz to hundreds of MHz. The expression of the electric field is:
the two outputs of the Mach-Zehnder interferometer and the output of the acousto-optic modulator are combined by the coupler and enter the low-speed photoelectric detector for beat frequency, and the expression of the generated current signal is as follows:
where + and-represents the upper and lower branches, the carrier frequency is f compared with the carrier frequency of equation (7) and equation (8)sThe amplitude information of (c) is obtained as an expression of an Amplitude Comparison Function (ACF) as follows:
the formula (9) shows that the method avoids the interference of direct current and low-frequency noise, the whole process is independent of the change of the light source power and the microwave power, and the expression of the frequency of the microwave to be measured is as follows:
said invention utilizes the unique advantages of photonics technique, and has the following advantages: the whole measurement process is irrelevant to the change of the microwave power and the optical power, has the advantages of large bandwidth, low loss, electromagnetic interference resistance and the like, and has simple structure and high response speed, and the microwave frequency value to be measured can be obtained without a complex signal processing process. On the other hand, the frequency information of microwave signals in different frequency bands is converted into the central carrier frequency fsThe amplitude signal of the radio frequency signal effectively avoids the interference of direct current and low-frequency noise, and improves the measurement precision.
Description of the drawings:
FIG. 1 is a system block diagram of the method of the present invention.
Fig. 2 shows complementary filtering of the upper optical sideband signal.
FIG. 3 is a schematic diagram of frequency shifting of a downstream optical sideband signal.
Fig. 4 is a schematic diagram of generating a fixed carrier frequency signal.
Detailed Description
The following further describes the implementation of the present invention with reference to the accompanying drawings.
As shown in FIG. 1, the present invention comprises a continuous laser light source 10, an optical carrier suppression type single side band modulation module 20, optical couplers 30-33, a Mach-Zehnder interferometer 40, an acousto-optic modulator 50, low- speed photodetectors 60 and 61, and an electrical processing module 70.
From a laser source 10 (frequency f)c) Starting from this, the emitted light enters a carrier-suppressed single-sideband modulation module 20, which is formed by an electro-optical modulator 201 (intensity modulator or phase modulator) and a band-pass filter 202 connected together; received radio frequency signal (frequency f)m) The output optical signal is externally modulated in an electro-optical modulator 201 and then passed through a bandpass filter 202 to obtain only a single first order optical sideband. The first-order optical sideband is divided into two branches by the coupler 30, the upper branch enters the Mach-Zehnder interferometer 40, the position of the optical carrier is aligned with the position of one wave peak or wave trough in the inherent complementary transmission response, and two port signals A and B of complementary filtering are output after the delay interference is realized; the lower branch enters the acousto-optic modulator 50 to generate the central frequencyfsAt a frequency f of the optical wavec+fm+fsAnd then split into two branches C and D via a coupler 31. The upper branch output signal a and the lower branch output signal C are combined by the coupler 32 and enter the low-speed photodetector 60 for beat frequency, and similarly, the upper branch output signal B and the lower branch output signal D are combined by the coupler 33 and enter the low-speed photodetector 61. Beat frequency generating carrier frequency of fsThe amplitude ratio function is obtained by comparing the amplitudes of the two radio frequency signals, and the frequency of the microwave signal to be detected is deduced.
Optical signal E output after laser source is input into carrier suppression type single side band modulation module1(t) can be expressed as:
wherein t is a time variable, E0Is the electric field amplitude of the optical carrier, beta is the modulation index of the electro-optic modulator 201, fcIs the frequency of the laser source, fmRepresenting the frequency of the received microwave signal to be measured. The first-order optical sideband in equation (11) enters the mach-zehnder interferometer, and the two-port output of the complementary filter is expressed as:
the other optical sideband signal is transmitted to the acousto-optic modulator to generate fsThe amount of optical frequency shift of, the output optical signal EC(t) the expression is:
the two paths of output of the Mach-Zehnder interferometer and the output of the acousto-optic modulator are combined by the coupler and enter the low-speed photoelectric detector for beat frequency, and the expression of the generated two electric signals is as follows:
where + and-represents the upper and lower branches, the carrier frequency is f in formula (14) and formula (15) are comparedsThe amplitude information of (c) is obtained as an expression of an Amplitude Comparison Function (ACF) as follows:
as can be seen from the formula (16), the method avoids interference of direct current and low frequency noise, and the whole process is independent of changes of the light source power and the microwave power, and the expression of the frequency of the microwave to be measured is obtained as follows:
in summary, the present invention has the following features: 1) the whole system has the advantages of large bandwidth, low loss, electromagnetic interference resistance and the like, and is simple in structure, high in response speed and capable of obtaining the microwave frequency value to be measured without a complex signal processing process; 2) the whole measurement process is irrelevant to the change of the microwave power and the optical power, and the measurement of the frequency of the microwave to be measured can be realized in a wide frequency band range; 3) the use of the acousto-optic modulator enables the frequency information of the microwave signals of different frequency bands to be converted into the central carrier frequency fsThe amplitude signal of the radio frequency signal effectively avoids the interference of direct current and low-frequency noise, and improves the measurement precision.
The above description is only a preferred embodiment of the present invention, and it should be noted that several modifications and variations can be made in the actual implementation without departing from the spirit of the method and core device of the present invention.