Method and apparatus for analyzing the spectrum of radio-frequency signals using a fiber optic recirculation loop

1. An apparatus comprising:

as fiber optical loop for conducting a first and a second light pulses having a corresponding first and second wavelengths;

a first splitter for separating the first and second light pulses in the optical loop into a first and second light paths to introduce a predetermined time delay between the first and second light pulses;

a coupler for receiving the first and second light pulses and tapping replicas of the pair of light pulses from the loop;

an auto-correlation module, coupled to the coupler, for correlating the replica of the pair of light pulses with each other to produce a set of data points comprising a plurality of multiplied correlated pair of light pulses; and

a transform module, coupled to the auto-correlation module, for transforming the data points into a channelized frequency spectrum.

2. The apparatus of claim 1 further comprising:

a first switch for generating the first and second light pulse from the first and second modulated light coupled to an input port of the coupler of the fiber optical loop;

an amplifier, coupled to the loop, for amplifying the remaining loop pulse pair in the fiber optical loop;

a first path and a second path amplifiers coupled to the first splitter in the first path and the second path, correspondingly, to modify the predetermined time delay.

3. The apparatus of claim 1 further comprising:

a first and second photo-detectors, coupled to an output port of the coupler, for generating a first and second RF signals from the replicated pulse pair;

a filter coupled to the auto-correlation module for filtering a base-band product of the correlated pair of light pulses; and

wherein the transform module is a Fast-Fourier Transform (FFT) module for performing an FFT on the plurality of correlated pair of pulses, generating a channelized frequency spectrum.

4. The apparatus of claim 2 further comprising:

a first and second isolators, coupled before and after the amplifier, for preventing reflection of the loop pulse in the loop; and

wherein a first and second lights, generated by a first and second light sources, modulated by a radio frequency signal by a modulator generate the first and second light pulses.

5. The apparatus of claim 3 wherein the auto-correlation module comprises:

a combiner for adding the amplified first and second RF signals; and

a detector for multiplying the first and the second RF signals.

6. The apparatus of claim 5 further comprising:

an analog to digital converter (ADC), coupled to the filter, for converting the base-hand product of the correlated pair of light pulses to digital points for the FFT module.

7. The apparatus of claim 2 further comprising:

a combiner for combing the first and second light pulses after being split by the splitter into the first and second paths;

a phase shifter for shifting the phase of the combined first and second light pulses;

a second switch for filtering noise from the combined first and second light pulses; and

a polarizer for reducing polarization effects in the fiber optical loop.

8. The apparatus of claim 2 wherein the first and second switches are high contrast gate switches and are synchronized with each other.

9. The apparatus of claim 2 wherein the output of the first switch is coupled to a plurality of cascaded fiber optical loops for processing continuous wave signals.

10. The apparatus of claim 6 wherein the first and second switches, the analog to digital converter and the FFT module are controlled by a computer.

11. The apparatus of method 4 further comprising:

a combiner coupled to the first and second light sources for combining the first and second lights into a multiplexed light signal;

a first polarizer, coupled to the combiner, for matching the polarization effects in the modulator; and

a second polarizer, coupled to the modulator, for controlling the polarization effects in the multiplexed light signal in the coupler and optical loop.

12. The apparatus of claim 11 wherein the combiner is a multiplex.

13. The apparatus of claim 12 wherein the multiplexer is a wavelength division multiplex.

14. The apparatus of claim 11 wherein the first polarizer is a fiber polarizer.

15. The apparatus of claim 4 wherein the modulator is a Mach Zehnder optical modulator.

16. The apparatus of claim 1 wherein the coupler has a coupling ratio range from 50%:50% to 1%:99%.

17. The apparatus of claim 1 wherein a length of the fiber optical loop length is greater than a pulse width in real space.

18. The apparatus of claim 1 wherein the fiber optical loop is dispersion shifted fiber with non-dispersion around the operating wavelength.

19. The apparatus of claim 2 wherein the amplifier is an Erbium doped fiber amplifier (EDFA).

20. A method for determining a channelized frequency spectrum from an RF signal comprising:

conducting, in a fiber optical loop, a first and second lights generated by the first and second light sources;

modulating, using a modulator, the first and second lights by a radio frequency signal to create a first and second pulses with corresponding first and second wavelengths;

splitting, using a first splitter, the first and second pulses in the optical loop into a first and second path based on wavelength of the first and second pulses for a small portion of the loop to introduce a predetermined time delay between the first and second pulses;

tapping, using a coupler, a replica of the pair of pulses from the loop;

correlating, using an auto-correlation module, coupled to the coupler, the replica of the pair of pulses with each other; and

performing a Fast-Fourier Transform (FFT), using an FFT module, on a plurality of the correlated pair of pulses, generating a channelized frequency spectrum.