Stimulated Brillouin Scattering Based Image-Reject Microwave Signal Harmonic Down-Converter

We propose and demonstrate a photonic microwave signal harmonic down-converter with image rejection capability via stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS). A dual-polarization dual-parallel Mach–Zehnder modulator (DP-DPMZM) is driven by a radio frequency/image (RF/IM) signal and a local oscillation (LO) signal to realize equivalent phase modulation and 4th-order double sideband modulation respectively. The optical carriers from the two arms of the DP-DPMZM can cancel out each other after polarization combining, thereby increasing the useful optical signal power in photodetection. Since the beating notes between the IM-modulated signals and LO-modulated 4th-order sidebands interfere destructively, the down-converted IM signals disappear naturally, which makes the down-converted image parts be suppressed in optical domain. By using an SBS-based dual-band microwave photonic filter to suppress the RF modulated -1st-order sideband and amplify the +1st-order sideband, destructive interference can be broken. Therefore, the RF signal over frequency range of 21-28 GHz can be down-converted to intermediate frequency (IF) band, and the image rejection ratio (IRR) can be also improved to more than 55 dB. Under -160 dBm/Hz noise floor, the SFDR is 105.1 dB·Hz^2/3.