In the joint research center where the team work in Pisa, it has available a large number of laboratories forming a world-level research center of 1500sqm, with a value of equipment exceeding 15 million euro.
The main laboratory facilities are reported below:
| Telescopes | Vector Network Analyser at 40GHz |
| Antennas for X, and S bands | Pulse Pattern Generators at 40Gb/s |
| 400Gb/s Coherent System | Error Detectors up to 40Gb/s |
| Photonic-based 400MSample/s RF ADC | Optical Amplifiers and Tunable Optical Delay Lines |
| Ultra-Short Optical Pulse Source at 1550nm | Highly Nonlinear PM and non-PM Fiber Spans |
| Digital Sampling Oscilloscopes at 100GHz | Fixed and Tunable Optical Filters |
| Signal Source Analyser | Tunable Lasers in the Optical S, C, L Bands |
| Optical & 40GHz RF Spectrum Analysers | Biband Photonic-based Radar in S & X Bands |
| Fiber splicing machines | 0.5-40 GHz RF scanning receiver |
Moreover, few set ups are available for digital and microwave photonics.
Photonic chip testing setup
Microwave photonics setups
A MIMO biband radar system is available working in S- and X- bands (2.5 and 10 GHz), with two transmitter, and two receivers, e large band horn antennas.
OAM fibre transmission setup
The team recently built an experimental setup for OAM fibre transmission. The setup, reported below, is currently suitable for 10 OAM channel transmission. Available testing for external cooperation:
- OAM fibre testing (mode coupling, crosstalk, etc...)
- Multiple OAM channels transmission with OOK, and coherent transmission (QPSK and 16QAM)
- MIMO processing.
OAM device testing and exploitation
The setup for OAM device testing and exploitation is available. The testbed comprises state of the art bulk optics equipment, infrared and visible cameras, lenses, mirrors, micro positioning systems, SLMs, special lensed fibres. As of today, tens of single and multi OAM integrated emitters have been tested and exploited in the testbed. The multi OAM emitters are able to generate multiple OAM modes simultaneously and are tunable via wavelength or temperature. The fabricated integrated devices have been exploited to implement OAM switching and converting schemes.
Available testing for external cooperation:
- Testing of Photonic Integrated Circuit for beam emission (fibre coupling, losses, efficiency, etc...)
- Multiple OAM channels generation and transmission in air paths
- OAM to gaussian and gaussian to OAM beams conversion
- OAM channels processing (switching and conversion
- Single or multiple channel generation in various formats (OOK, PSK, QPSK,...)
- Coherent signal generator/reveiver
- BER testing equipment.
