Photonic Frequency Upconversion by SBS-Based Frequency Tripling

We describe a photonic frequency upconversion by the stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS)-based frequency tripling method. The frequency tripling and the photonic frequency upconversion are simultaneously obtained by incorporating a dual-electrode electrooptic modulator (EOM) and a single optical source. Each electrode of the dual-electrode EOM is driven by both an intermediate frequency (IF) and a microwave radio frequency (RF) signal, respectively, along with the optical frequency tripling scheme. The dual-electrode EOM generates appropriate optical sidebands, while the IF signal is conveyed by the pump signal. After the successive SBS shifting process, one of the third optical sidebands is amplified by the narrow gain spectrum of SBS. The carrier signal at 32.493 GHz with narrow linewidth, which is amplified by 20 dB while the other signals are suppressed more than 20 dB, is obtained after photodetection. From the simultaneous frequency upconversion and tripling, an IF signal at 1 GHz is upconverted around the 32.493-GHz signal, which is tripled from the RF signal (10.831 GHz). To verify the ability of conveying broadband data that is limited in the previous method based on SBS, the upconversion of a pilot tone at 1 GHz is demonstrated, which means that the data rate exceeds 1 Gb/s. The proposed photonic frequency upconversion shows the spurious free dynamic range of 75.1 $\hbox{dB}\cdot \hbox{Hz}^{2/3}$ , which is suitable for a wireless personal communication system adopting the analog fiber-optic link.