A Novel Approach to Generate Chirped Waveform by using Chirped Lithium Niobate Mach-Zehnder Modulator

A novel technique to generate an arbitrary chirped waveform by harnessing features of Lithium Niobate Mach-Zehnder analog intensity Modulator is suggested and verified by mathematical analysis. The most important application of chirped microwave waveform is that, it improves the range- resolution of radar. In the proposed approach, two electrical drive signal of opposite gain is used to modulate light coming out from the continuous-wave (CW) laser in LiNb Mach-Zehnder modulator (MZM). The output of the MZM is chirped optical waveform due to the dependence of the mach-zehnder modulators chirp on the form of signals applied to the drive electrode. In our simple and straight forward method of producing chirped waveform, is basically based on the concept of change in phase at the two arms of Lithium Niobate Mach-Zehnder modulator due to change in refractive index at the respective arms when electric drive voltage is applied. The chirping phenomenon is expressed in terms of an intrinsic chirp parameter of the MZM. The proposed design is simple, easy to implement and cost effective than the previously proposed model of chirped waveform generation uses the MZM and chirped fiber Bragg grating.