High power MMW synthesizer with truly continuous ultra wide bandwidth tuning range

A method for synthesizing comprising:

• providing a gain medium disposed within a laser resonator cavity;
• generating, with a saturable absorber, a waveform via an active injection locking signal to create a mode locking effect, the waveform having a frequency comb defined by one or more dimensions of the gain medium including at least one of a length, a width, or a height of the gain medium;
• modulating, with a crystal electro-optical modulator, the waveform by altering an optical path length of the laser resonator cavity to adjust a frequency output from a synthesizer;
• and
• impinging on an external photodiode with the waveform to output an emission RF waveform.

A tunable source radar system comprising:

• a radar transmitter configured to emit radar pulses;
• a radar receiver configured to receive scattered radar pulses corresponding to the emitted radar pulses;
• and
• a synthesizer configured to generate an RF or MMW frequency used by the radar transmitter and the radar receiver to transmit or receive at a specified frequency, the synthesizer including:
• a first resonator mirror;
• a second resonator mirror;
• a gain medium disposed within a laser resonator cavity, the laser resonator cavity defined by the first resonator mirror and the second resonator mirror;
• a saturable absorber operationally coupled to the gain medium and having active control such that the saturable absorber is configured to generate a waveform via an injection locking signal to create a mode locking effect, the waveform having a frequency comb defined by one or more dimensions of the gain medium including at least one of a length, a width, or a height of the gain medium;
• and
• a crystal electro-optical modulator disposed within the laser resonator cavity, the crystal electro-optical modulator having a nonlinear index of refraction as a function of voltage applied thereto;
• wherein the synthesizer is configured such that (i) the waveform passes through the crystal electro-optical modulator to impinge on an external photodiode to output an emission RF waveform and (ii) changing the voltage applied to the crystal electro-optical modulator changes the index of refraction of the crystal electro-optical modulator, altering an optical path length of the laser resonator cavity to adjust a frequency of the emission RF waveform.