Scientists have developed new photonic filters to separate communication signals from noise

Scientists have developed a new chip sized microwave photon filter for separating communication signals from noise and suppressing undesirable interference that occurs across the entire radio spectrum.

The device is expected to help the next generation of wireless communications technology efficiently transmit data in an environment flooded with signals from devices such as self-driving cars, mobile phones, smart city infrastructure and connected devices.

"These advances will directly and indirectly impact daily life, improve the overall quality of life, and lead to new experiences in various areas such as mobile, smart home and public Spaces," Wang added.

In a new study, scientists explain how their new photon filter can overcome the limitations of traditional electronics to perform multiple functions in a chip-sized device with low power consumption.

In addition, they demonstrate the potential for filters to operate over a wide range of the RF spectrum extending beyond 30 GHz. This shows its applicability to visualization 6G technology.

The reason behind the development of 6G technology is to improve the currently deployed 5G communication network. To transfer more data at faster speeds, the 6G network is expected to use millimeter-wave or even terahertz bands.

Since this will spread the signal over an extremely wide spectrum at a high data rate, interference is likely to occur between the various communication channels.

To solve this problem, the scientists intend to design a filter that can protect signal receivers from many kinds of interference across the entire radio spectrum.

In order to widely deploy the price and practicability, the filter has the compact, low power consumption, the realization of a variety of filtering functions and can be integrated into the chip of great significance. But early demonstrations were limited by their large size, few features, limited bandwidth or demands related to electronic components.

For the new filter, the scientists made a streamlined photon architecture made up of four main parts. Initially, the phase modulator acts as an input to the RF signal, adjusting the electrical signal to the optical domain.

Then, to shape the modulation format, the double ring acts as a switch. As we all know, the tunable microring is the core unit of signal processing. Finally, the photodetector acts as the output end of the radio frequency signal to extract the radio frequency signal from the optical signal.

Wang adds, "Due to the high reconfigurability of the proposed ICSSA-CM, no additional RF equipment is required to build various filtering functions, thus simplifying the composition of the overall system."

For the device to be tested, the scientists used a high-frequency probe to load an RF signal into the chip and a high-speed photodetector to collect the recovered signal.

They use directional antennas and arbitrary waveform generators to simulate the generation of 2 Gb/ s high-speed wireless transmission signals, and use high-speed oscilloscopes to receive the processed signals. The scientists were able to illustrate the filter's performance by comparing the results with and without the filter.

Overall, the results show that the simplified photonic architecture achieves comparable performance with lower system complexity and loss compared to earlier programmable integrated microwave photonic filters consisting of hundreds of repeating units. This makes it more robust, energy efficient and easier to build than earlier devices.

The scientists plan to further refine the modulator and enhance the entire filter architecture to achieve high dynamic range and low noise, while ensuring a high degree of integration at the device and system level.

Source: Laser Net