93-GHz Wireless Transmission Enabled by a Wideband Photonic Oscillator Based on Two Phase-Locked Lasers

The mm-wave frequency spectrum offers the possibility to afford the increasing demand of high data-rate communication links. Microwave-photonics techniques can be advantageously used for reconfigurable generation of very high frequency clocks with no need for high-frequency and high-performance electrical oscillators and the additional functionality of remote distribution of the signal through fiber-optics or free-space optic links. Here we successfully test the spectral purity and stability of a wideband tunable photonic oscillator (WTPO) for supporting analog up-conversion of GHz-rate complex data signals in a W-band wireless transmission testbed. The oscillator output is derived from the beating into a photodiode of two narrow-linewidth lasers which are phase locked thanks to an electronic locking system. In this first demonstration, the WTPO output frequency has been multiplied to reach the target W band and error vector magnitude measurements attest the suitability of the solution for next generation 6G mobile networks.