Abstract: Frequency agility continues to grow in importance in both radar and communications systems. The demand for greater numbers of frequencies has led to the development of frequency synthesizers to replace crystal oscillators as sources. While the exact requirements for the synthesizer vary with the particular application, most systems share a need for rapid switching and settling, excellent frequency purity and phase stability, and strong suppression of spurious signals. This paper describes an optical approach to implementation of RF synthesis which exploits the single-sideband feature of acousto-optic modulation to achieve synthesis via the mix-and-divide approach without need of filters. Alternative approaches to reference signal switching are described. Preliminary results showing excellent synthesized signal purity and spurious signal suppression are given.!0
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