125-GHz Microwave Signal Generation Employing an Integrated Pulse Shaper

We propose and experimentally demonstrate an on-chip pulse shaper for 125-GHz microwave waveform generation. The pulse shaper is implemented based on a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) platform that has a structure with eight-tap finite impulse response (FIR) and there is an amplitude modulator on each tap. By controlling the thermal heaters on the amplitude modulators, we obtain several signals centered at 125 GHz with typical envelopes, such as square envelope, triangular envelope, sawtooth envelope, Gaussian envelope, etc. Our scheme has some significant advantages, such as the central frequency of the generated microwave waveforms is larger than 100 GHz, and it has wide bandwidth when changing the time delay of the adjacent taps and compactness, capability for integration with electronics and small power consumption are also its merits.