A simple scheme to generate two millimeter-wave signals for radio-over-fiber systems

In the paper, we proposed a simple method to generate two millimeter-wave (MMW) signals for radio-over-fiber (RoF) systems. Firstly, we utilized two cascaded dual-drive Mach-Zehnder modulators (DD-MZMs), both biased at the maximum transmission bias point (MATBP), to implement frequency octupling. And then, a wavelength division multiplexing demultiplexer (WDM Demux) is followed to filter out the -4 order optical carriers of the second DD-MZM's output to enable an optical single side-band (OSSB) modulation by only modulating the baseband data onto the -4 order optical carrier. On the other hand, the +2 order optical carrier of the first DD-MZM's output is filtered out based on an optical splitter (OS) and an optical rectangle band-pass filter (ORBPF). After that, the +2 and the -4 order optical carriers are combined to be transmitted in an identical fiber path. Finally, a 45 GHz and a 60 GHz MMWs were generated simultaneously with a 7.5 GHz local oscillator (LO), by self-heterodyning these optical carriers in a photonic detector (PD). After 50 km single-mode fiber (SMF) transmission distances, the 45 GHz and the 60 GHz MMWs were maintaining good performance with clearly open eye diagrams and power penalties of 0.6 dB and 1.1 dB, respectively, at a bit-error-rate (BER) of 1×10
^-9
.