Remoted all optical instantaneous frequency measurement system using nonlinear mixing in highly nonlinear optical fiber

A novel remoted instantaneous frequency measurement system using all optical mixing is demonstrated. This system copies an input intensity modulated optical carrier using four wave mixing, delays this copy and then mixes it with the original signal, to produce an output idler tone. The intensity of this output can be used to determine the RF frequency of the input signal. This system is inherently broadband and can be easily scaled beyond 40 GHz while maintaining a DC output which greatly simplifies receiving electronics. The remoted configuration isolates the sensitive and expensive receiver hardware from the signal sources and importantly allows the system to be added to existing microwave photonic implementations without modification of the transmission module. © 2013 Optical Society of America.