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With the rapid and ongoing developments in telecommunication and electronic warfare technology, faster and more flexible systems are in demand. Wideband signal processing is thus needed to implement such systems. Microwave photonics has been introduced as a tool for achieving such ultra - broadband signal processing. Instantaneous Frequency Measurement (IFM) receivers play an important role in electronic warfare. They have been developed as a means of obtaining a rapid indication of the presence of a threat and to roughly identify the frequency of the threat signals. They also have the advantages of low-cost, compactness and moderate to good sorting capability in an interference-free environment. The main limitation of the traditional IFM RF receivers is the constrained bandwidth. Microwave Photonic IFMs have been considered, but the main disadvantages of photonic realization of the recent IFM receiver is cost. This work proposes and demonstrates a low - cost photonic IFM receiver with a broad frequency measurement range. The proposed methods are based on the use of photonic mixing to down-convert the RF modulated optical signals to DC.

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