Multiband Signal Generation and Dispersion-Tolerant Transmission Based on Photonic Frequency Tripling Technology for 60-GHz Radio-Over-Fiber Systems

We designed and experimentally demonstrated an efficient photonic frequency-tripling technology for 60-GHz radio-over-fiber systems to simultaneously realize millimeter-wave (mm-wave), microwave, and baseband signal generation. The technique utilizes vestigial sideband filtering in combination with optical carrier suppression to generate novel alternate subcarrier modulation for high tolerance of fiber dispersion. Experimental verification of the proposed scheme is presented with generation and error-free transmission of 2.1-Gb/s data on the 63-GHz mm-wave and 21-GHz microwave carriers over 50-km single-mode fiber (SMF-28) without dispersion compensation. The power penalty for both signals is less than 1.0 dB.