Abstract:
Microwave photonic techniques are overtaking electronic techniques in commercial as well as in military applications because it offers large bandwidth
with low transmission loss and has no effect of electromagnetic interference.
Because of benefits offered by microwave photonics, it is used for RF generation, transmission, microwave based signal processing and microwave assisted
measurements. Frequency measurement is basic demand in telecommunications and radar systems but electronic techniques for frequency measurement
has limited bandwidth and are unable to measure very high frequencies. Microwave photonic techniques can be considered perfect for this purpose because of their advantage of wideband and extremely high frequency measurements. Technique proposed in this thesis reduced the complexity of previous
photonic based frequency measurement techniques by translating high unknown frequencies to lower known frequencies using process of heterodyne
detection. Procedure includes frequency measurement by identification of
beats produced after heterodyning of locally produced known frequencies
with unknown frequency which needs measurement.
