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OEwaves, Inc. has partnered with Georgia Tech to pioneer a new RF photonic receiver front-end designed to transform microwave signal processing. The project focuses on leveraging breakthroughs in silicon (Si) and silicon nitride (SiN) integrated photonics to create chip-scale solutions that are compact, efficient, and highly selective.
The effort combines Georgia Tech’s expertise in integrated photonic structures with OEwaves’ extensive experience in analog photonic systems. Together, the team is developing a wideband chip-scale tuner with IF filtering capabilities, offering a compact and cost-effective alternative to traditional high-cost channelized architectures.
At the heart of this approach are novel integrated optical filters with ultra-high quality factors (“Qs”). These photonic resonators allow for precise filtering and tuning, enabling highly selective processing of narrow-band, weak, and scattered RF and microwave signals. This architecture delivers rapid tuning across a wide bandwidth, while minimizing size, weight, and power requirements — critical advantages for advanced communication and sensing systems.
The project aims to demonstrate a fully functional integrated filter prototype system by the end of Phase II. This milestone will mark a major step toward practical deployment of versatile RF photonic tuners capable of optimizing key parameters such as selectivity, bandwidth coverage, tuning extent, and speed, all on a compact integrated photonic platform.
By merging the strengths of academic innovation and industry-proven rapid development, OEwaves and Georgia Tech are charting a path toward the next generation of high-performance, lightweight, and energy-efficient RF photonic systems.
View project here.
