Flexible mm-wave frequency and high-speed arbitrary IQ signal synthesis by a photonic system on chip

Photonics-assisted millimeter-wave (mm-wave) and terahertz signal generation overcomes the intrinsic bandwidth limitations of electronic devices by exploiting the ultra-wide bandwidth and coherence of optical carriers. Here, we demonstrate a silicon photonic chip combined with a reconfigurable optical frequency comb for flexible mm-wave synthesis. Experiments demonstrate the generation and demodulation of a 46 GHz single-frequency signal, simultaneous 39 GHz and 52 GHz multi-frequency signals, and 41 GHz vector signals. The chip integrates reconfigurable filtering and modulation, enabling precise frequency allocation, multitone combination, and arbitrary IQ vector signal synthesis. These results verify a compact and scalable architecture for agile radio-over-fiber and next generation high-frequency wireless systems.