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Microwave photonics is the practical application of electromagnetic waves with a wavelength between one millimetre and one meter. Microwaves are important for communications, and systems for detecting microwaves are crucial for astronomy. The term also includes high-frequency electronic systems.
The authors showcase an optical-to-microwave conversion method using an optomechanical waveguide integrated with a piezoelectric transducer. The presented system allows bidirectional optical-to-microwave conversion with a quantum efficiency of up to—54.16 dB.
Here the authors propose a self-homodyne fronthaul architecture, utilizing DA-RoF super channels and multicore fiber, paving the way for the Pb/s era in fronthaul transmission, enabling ultra-highspeed Internet access. The remarkable data speeds reaching 0.879 Pb/s and the 256-QAM format make it possible for 150,000 5G channels to be accessed simultaneously.
The authors propose a residual carrier modulation scheme to overcome laser phase noise in coherent optical systems. The method improves bitrate and spectral efficiency by 41% using low-cost lasers, and showcase potential in cost-sensitive scenarios.
Lu et al. demonstrated a bidirectional optical wireless communication system for 5G communications using wavelength-division multiplexing and cascaded reflective semiconductor optical amplifiers. The system achieves an aggregate rate of 36.4 Gb/s over a 100-m optical wireless link, enhancing 5G communication capabilities.
Remote detection protocols use waves scattering off a target, but a formal description of how waves acquire and transmit information about objects has been lacking. The density and flux of Fisher information now provide a way to understand this process.
An inexpensive and compact short-range radar, which is capable of beam steering and operates at 330–500 GHz, can be used to detect heartbeat-induced chest motions through a person’s clothes.
Modulation of light by external waves is an essential function in any photonics-based system. Using an integrated plasmonic approach, the speed of modulation of 1.55-μm waves has now been extended to the ‘low’ THz band.
