A method for generating reconfigurable photonic arbitrary phase-coded microwave signals with fundamental/double/triple carrier frequencies

Abstract

A method for generating reconfigurable photonic arbitrary phase-coded microwave signal with fundamental/double/triple carrier frequencies is proposed and demonstrated. A dual-parallel dual-polarization Mach‒Zehnder modulator (DP-DPMZM) and an optical bandpass filter (OBPF) are cascaded to generate orthogonally polarized optical carrier signals and 1st/2nd/3rd -order sideband signals, which are sent into a polarization-dependent phase modulator (PD-PM), which can realize phase modulation with different polarization state optical signals. The phase modulated signal after PD-PM will be projected into the polarization direction with a polarizer (Pol) and the phase shifting microwave signal will be obtained with a photodetector (PD). This method enables the frequency multiplication factor to be changed by tuning the bias voltage of the modulator alone, which makes the system can work in a wide bandwidth, and it also reduces the frequency requirements of the local oscillator (LO) signal. In the simulation, binary phase-coded signals with center frequencies of 6 GHz, 12 GHz, and 18 GHz are generated, and their performance is verified.