With energy–time entangled biphoton sources as the optical carrier and time-correlated single-photon detection for high-speed radio frequency (RF) signal recovery, the method of quantum microwave photonics (QMWP) has presented the unprecedented potential of nonlocal RF signal encoding and efficient RF signal distilling from the dispersion interference associated with ultrashort pulse carriers. In this paper, its capability in microwave signal processing and prospective superiority are further demonstrated. Both QMWP RF phase shifting and transversal filtering functionality, which are the fundamental building blocks of microwave signal processing, are realized. Besides good immunity to the dispersion-induced frequency fading effect associated with the broadband carrier in classical MWP, a native two-dimensional parallel microwave signal processor is provided. These results well demonstrate the superiority of QMWP over classical MWP and open the door to new application fields of MWP involving encrypted processing.

As the main branch of microwave photonics, radio-over-fiber technology provides high bandwidth, low-loss, and long-distance propagation capability, facilitating wide applications ranging from telecommunication to wireless networks. With ultrashort pulses as the optical carrier, a large capacity is further endowed. However, the wide bandwidth of ultrashort pulses results in the severe vulnerability of high-frequency radio frequency (RF) signals to fiber dispersion. With a time-energy entangled biphoton source as the optical carrier combined with the single-photon detection technique, a quantum microwave photonics method in radio-over-fiber systems is proposed and demonstrated experimentally. The results show that it not only realizes unprecedented nonlocal RF signal modulation with strong resistance to the dispersion but also provides an alternative mechanism to distill the RF signal out from the dispersion effectively. Furthermore, the spurious-free dynamic ranges of the nonlocally modulated and distilled RF signals have been significantly improved. With the ultra-weak detection and the high-speed processing advantages endowed by the low-timing-jitter single-photon detection, the quantum microwave photonics method opens new possibilities in modern communication and networks.

Dissipative solitons relying on the double balance between nonlinear and linear effects as well as cavity loss and gain have attracted increasing attention in recent years, since they give rise to novel operating states of various dissipative nonlinear systems. An optoelectronic oscillator (OEO) is a dissipative nonlinear microwave photonic system with a high quality factor that has been widely investigated for generating ultra-low noise single-frequency microwave signals. Here, we report a novel operating state of an OEO related to dissipative solitons, i.e., spontaneous frequency hopping related to the formation of dissipative microwave photonic solitons. In this operating state, dissipative microwave photonic solitons occur due to the double balance between nonlinear gain saturation and linear filtering as well as cavity loss and gain in the OEO cavity, creating spontaneous frequency-hopping microwave signals. The generation of wideband tunable frequency-hopping microwave signals with a fast frequency-hopping speed up to tens of nanoseconds is observed in the experiment, together with the corresponding soliton sequences. This work reveals a novel mechanism between the interaction of nonlinear and linear effects in an OEO cavity, extends the suitability and potential applications of solitons, and paves the way for a new class of soliton microwave photonic systems for the generation, processing, and control of microwave and RF signals.

A modulator is an essential building block in the integrated photonics, connecting the electrical with optical signals. The microring modulator gains much attention because of the small footprint, low drive voltage and high extinction ratio. An ultra-low V_pp and high-modulation-depth indium phosphide-based racetrack microring modulator is demonstrated in this paper. The proposed device mainly comprises one racetrack microring, incorporating a semiconductor amplifier, and coupling with a bus waveguide through a multimode interference coupler. Traveling wave electrodes are employed to supply bidirectional bias ports, terminating with a 50-Ω impedance. The on/off extinction ratio of the microring reaches 43.3 dB due to the delicately tuning of the gain. An 11 mV V_pp, a maximum 42.5 dB modulation depth and a 6.6 GHz bandwidth are realized, respectively. This proposed microring modulator could enrich the functionalities and designability of the fundamental integrated devices.

The 4-level pulse amplitude modulation (PAM4) based on an 23 GHz ultrabroadband directly modulated laser (DML) was proposed. We have experimentally demonstrated that based on intensity modulation and direct detection (IMDD) 56 Gbps per wavelength PAM4 signals transferred over 35 km standard single mode fiber (SSMF) without any optical amplification and we have achieved the bit error rate (BER) of the PAM4 transmission was under 2.9 × 10^–4 by using feed forward equalization (FFE).

An optoelectronic oscillator (OEO) is a microwave photonic system that produces microwave signals with ultralow phase noise using a high-quality-factor optical energy storage element. This type of oscillator is desired in various practical applications, such as communication links, signal processing, radar, metrology, radio astronomy, and reference clock distribution. Recently, new mode control and selection methods based on Fourier domain mode-locking and parity-time symmetry have been proposed and experimentally demonstrated in OEOs, which overcomes the long-existing mode building time and mode selection problems in a traditional OEO. Due to these mode control and selection methods, continuously chirped microwave waveforms can be generated directly from the OEO cavity and single-mode operation can be achieved without the need of ultranarrowband filters, which are not possible in a traditional OEO. Integrated OEOs with a compact size and low power consumption have also been demonstrated, which are key steps toward a new generation of compact and versatile OEOs for demanding applications. We review recent progress in the field of OEOs, with particular attention to new mode control and selection methods, as well as chip-scale integration of OEOs.

To overcome the beam squint in wide instantaneous frequency, we review a number of system-level optical controlled phase array antennas for beam forming. The optical delay network based on a fiber device in terms of topological structure of an N-bit optical switch, fiber grating, high-dispersion fiber, and vector-sum technology is discussed, respectively. Lastly, an integrated circuit is simply summarized.

Based on the hybrid integration technology, an ultra-compact and low cost transmitter optical subassembly module is proposed. Four directly modulated lasers are combined with a coarse wavelength division multiplexer operated at the O-band. The bandwidth for all channels is measured to be approximately 3 GHz. The 112 Gb/s transmission is experimentally demonstrated for a 10 km standard single mode fiber (SSMF), in which an optical isolator is used for avoiding the back-reflected and scattered light to improve the bit error rate (BER) performance. A low BER and clear eye opening are achieved for 10 km transmission.