We focus on photonic generation and transmission of microwave signals in this work. Based on dual-pumped stimulated Brillouin scattering, a single-sideband (SSB) optical signal with high sideband rejection ratio is obtained. Combined with a phase-modulated optical carrier, an arbitrarily phase coded microwave signal is generated after photoelectric conversion. The SSB modulation can eliminate the fiber-dispersion-induced power dispersion naturally, and the phase modulation of the optical carrier can achieve arbitrary phase encoding and suppress background noise. The proposed scheme can achieve both generation and anti-dispersion transmission of arbitrarily phase coded signals simultaneously, which is suitable for one-to-multi long-distance radar networking.

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.

We review the recent progress of photonic generation of millimeter wave (MMW)-ultra-wideband (UWB) signals. To fully satisfy the standard defined by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the baseband signal (background signal) and the residual local oscillator (LO) signal should be well controlled. We discuss several schemes in this work for generating background-free MMW-UWB signals that are fully compliant with the FCC requirement.

We review the recent work of distributed-feedback (DFB) multi-wavelength semiconductor laser arrays (MWLAs) based on the reconstruction equivalent chirp (REC) technique. The experimental results show that the proposed MWLA has very high wavelength precision (<±0.1 nm), while the fabrication cost is low. Only one step of holographic exposure and another step of photolithography are required for grating fabrication. The packaging technique for a high-bandwidth analog DFB laser and laser array was developed. A directly modulated MWLA transmitter module was achieved. In addition, an improved MWLA with an integrated reflector was proposed and successfully applied in a radio-over-fiber system.