Integrated Photomixing for mm-wave Carrier Generation

We present a photomixing technique for generating mm-wave carriers for 6G mobile fronthaul applications, where seamless integration of fiber-wireless links demands scalable, as well as spectrally-, and energy-efficient methods to tackle the aspects of generation, manipulation, and transmission of signals on mm-wave frequencies. The elimination of optical filtering through the injection-locking technique is emphasized. An example of a low-cost gain-switched optical frequency comb suitable for chip integration is elaborated through simulations that an optical injection locking technique can be used to suppress the undesired comb lines, thus avoiding optical bandpass filters. We show that a spectrally pure radio signal at a desired mm-wave frequency can be generated using widely available InP platform available in established low-cost multi-project wafer fabrication runs, by co-integrating such photonic integrated circuit with a low-frequency RF synthesizer.