Characterization of instantaneous frequency and glitches of sweeping oscillator and its application to multifrequency estimation

A novel photonics approach to the characterization of instantaneous frequency and glitches of sweeping oscillators is proposed and demonstrated based on a PRBS frequency comb. The analog sweeps of a vector signal generator, whose sweeping ranges are 0.5 GHz to 2.5 GHz and 2.5 GHz to 5 GHz respectively, are calibrated using the proposed method, and the glitches of sweeping is also identified. The proposed system has the advantages of broad bandwidth, simplified stable implementation and low cost. As an application of the characterized sweeping oscillator, the frequencies of a multi-tone signal are recognized accurately. The detection error is 5 kHz and the separation of the nearest detectable frequencies are 1 MHz.