Wideband Photonic Microwave SSB Up-Converter and I/Q Modulator

A wideband photonic microwave single sideband (SSB) up-converter and an in-phase/quadrature (I/Q) modulator are proposed and experimentally demonstrated. The intermediate frequency (IF) and local oscillator (LO) signals are applied to the submodulators of a dual-parallel Mach-Zehnder modulator (DPMZM) for frequency up-conversion, and the phase of the generated radio frequency signal can be arbitrarily tuned through the working point of the DPMZM. Using a polarization division multiplexing DPMZM, a wideband photonic microwave I/Q frequency up-converter can be constructed for SSB up-conversion or I/Q modulation. In the experiment, SSB signals with well-suppressed carrier and undesired sideband are generated over a wide frequency coverage of the LO (16-40 GHz) and IF (2-8 GHz) signals. In the experimental demonstration of I/Q modulation, 16- and 64-quadrature amplitude modulation signals with a symbol rate of 100 MSym/s and a carrier frequency from 10 to 40 GHz are successfully generated with low error vector magnitudes.