Patent ID: 8611759

Claim:
An apparatus comprising: a processor front-end including a source of first and second pump laser inputs; a signal laser wherein the signal laser generates a signal laser input, the signal laser input being modulated by a radio frequency (RF) signal to generate a RF modulated signal laser input; and a front-end multiplexer wherein the first and second pump laser inputs and the RF modulated signal laser input are input into the front-end multiplexer to generate a front-end multiplexed output signal containing characteristics of the first and second pump laser inputs and the RF modulated signal laser input; a mixer section including an initial mixing stage including a first non-linear section followed by a linear section, the front-end multiplexed output signal being provided as an input to the first non-linear section and being output as a third-order nonlinear process output, the third-order nonlinear process output being provided as an input to the linear section to thereby output a mixed time compressed and power enhanced signal containing characteristics of the first and second pump laser inputs and the RF modulated signal laser input; and a secondary mixing stage including a second nonlinear section, the mixed time compressed and power enhanced signal being input into the second nonlinear section and being replicated therein through third-order nonlinear processing to thereby output a comb of copies of the mixed time compressed and power enhanced signal having characteristics of the first and second pump laser inputs (hereafter pump laser comb of copies) and a comb of copies of the mixed time compressed and power enhanced signal having characteristics of the RF modulated signal laser input (hereafter RF modulated signal laser comb of copies); and a processor back-end including a periodic filter receiving the RF modulated signal laser comb of copies and filtering the same, the filter having a periodicity that differs from a periodicity of the RF modulated signal laser comb of copies and having a passband that is a fraction of a period of the RF modulated signal laser comb of copies, whereby the filter applies to each copy of the comb of copies of the RF modulated signal laser comb of copies thereby providing a filtered RF modulated signal laser comb of copies; a back-end multiplexer wherein the filtered RF modulated signal laser comb of copies are demultiplexed into individual channel outputs.