Silicon Photonics Enabled Hyper-wideband RF Receiver With >85% Instantaneous Bandwidth

We demonstrate the first-ever silicon photonics enabled hyper-wideband RF spread-spectrum link. A silicon photonic mode-locked laser encoded with a four-channel silicon phase encoder is used to generate optical carriers that coherently demodulate a received RF signal spanning an instantaneous bandwidth greater than 85% of the center frequency (12GHz/14GHz). This allows low-speed (3GHz) electronics to be used in place of the traditional costly and high-power wide-bandwidth electronics used in a conventional hyper-wideband link. In addition, integrated highly-tunable optical notch filters are successfully used to reject unwanted narrowband interference, with rejection and tunability that surpasses conventional wireless technology.