Brillouin-scattering-induced transparency enabled reconfigurable sensing of RF signals

Real-time spectrum sensing is essential to enable dynamic and rapid spectrum sharing of unused frequencies to cater the substantial demands of new wireless services deploying the existing RF bands. In this paper, we present a novel, real-time spectrum sensing approach for widely used RF signals based on Brillouin-scattering-induced transparency (BIT). A temporal discrimination of multi-channel input frequencies is achieved through the group delay tuning by BIT. By tuning the pump power and frequency, the proposed technique is fully reconfigurable and viable for a broad range of spectrum sensing. Several experimental illustrations of the time domain sensing are presented for two-tone channels with 0.9, 1.8, and 5 GHz frequencies to detect the unused spectrum within 3G, 4G, and 5G signals.