Simplified Doppler frequency shift measurement enabled by Serrodyne optical frequency translation

Abstract: A simplified Doppler frequency shift measurement approach based on Serrodyne optical frequency translation is reported. A sawtooth wave with an appropriate amplitude is sent to one phase modulation arm of a Mach-Zehnder modulator in conjunction with the transmitted signal to implement the Serrodyne optical frequency transition, as well as the optical phase modulation of the transmitted signal on the frequency-shifted optical carrier. The echo signal is applied to the other phase modulation arm of the Mach-Zehnder modulator. The optical signals from the two arms are combined in the Mach-Zehnder modulator, whose lower optical sidebands are selected by an optical bandpass filter and then detected in a photodetector. By simply measuring the frequency of the output low-frequency signal, the value and direction of DFS can be determined simultaneously. An experiment is performed. DFS from -100 to 100 kHz is measured for microwave signals from 6 to 17 GHz with a measurement error of less than 0.03 Hz and a measurement stability of 0.015 Hz in 30 minutes when a 500-kHz sawtooth wave is used as the reference.