Photonic frequency conversion for wideband RF-to-IF down-conversion and digitization

A photonic frequency converter based on optical sideband filtering can be used to produce upand down converted signals over a wide range of RF frequencies. The reduction of mixing spurs provides an important advantage over conventional RF mixers for wide-band operation. We demonstrate down-conversion from 5 20 GHz to a 100 MHz IF with positive gain and high linearity, and direct digitization of down-converted RF signals at 10 and 20 GHz with low degradation of ADC performance.