A review of photonic generation of arbitrary microwave waveforms

In this paper, a tutorial and a review of techniques for photonic generation of arbitrary RF waveforms, particularly the generations of those waveforms that are difficult and/or challenging to generate using electronic techniques are presented. Four major photonic approaches to generate RF waveforms are reviewed namely Fourier Transform Pulse Shaping and Frequency to Time Mapping [1, 2], Direct Time Synthesis [3], Discrete Space to Time Mapping [4] and Microwave Photonic Filtering [5, 6]. For each technique, we will study the operation principle, consider the technology used for implementation and examine the demonstrated results and reported performances. We will analyses the advantages and disadvantages of each implementation and investigate their ability to integrate as compact photonic chips. Finally, we suggest possible directions for further improvements and the future research directions.