Microwave Generation By Optical Techniques - A Review

This paper is a review of several emerging approaches to microwave generation by optical techniques. These approaches are aimed at types of microwave sources and frequencies, which are not well suited to "conventional" methods (transistor oscillators, TED, IMPATT, etc). These areas include mainly very high frequencies (sub-MM and THz) and also very low phase noise sources. For the very high frequencies heterodyne of optical signals is used. For the low phase noise applications, the opto-electronic oscillator is used. These methods are briefly reviewed below.