Introduction to High-Speed Optoelectronics - 525.796

This course provides the student with the fundamental concepts needed to address issues in both the design and test of high-speed optoelectronic systems. This is an emerging field where photonics is combined with high-speed electronics to generate, transmit, and process signals from microwave to terahertz frequencies. The purpose of this course is to introduce fundamental principles and state-of-the-art system applications. Topics include photonic and high-speed electronic principles, analog fiber optic link, principles of low-phase noise microwave sources, photonic methods for generating low-phase noise microwave signals, photonicbased RF signal processing techniques, and ultra-short optical pulse generation techniques. State-of-the-art applications include the low-phase noise opto-electronic oscillator, carrier envelope phase locked laser for time and frequency standards, photonic-based complex radar signal generators, phased-array antenna architectures including true time-delay beam forming and the ALMA radio-telescope array, photonic analog-to-digital converter techniques, electro-optic sampling, and Terahertz signal generation. Prerequisite(s): Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering or physics. An undergraduate course in electromagnetics is required. A course in microwave theory is preferred.