Abstract
Broadband electro-optic intensity modulators are essential to convert electrical signals to the optical domain. The growing interest in terahertz wireless applications demands modulators with frequency responses to the sub-terahertz range, high power handling, and very low nonlinear distortions, simultaneously. However, a modulator with all those characteristics has not been demonstrated to date. Here, we experimentally demonstrate that plasmonic modulators do not trade-off any performance parameter, featuring—at the same time—a short length of tens of micrometers, record-high flat frequency response beyond 500 GHz, high power handling, and high linearity, and we use them to create a sub-terahertz radio-over-fiber analog optical link. These devices have the potential to become a new tool in the general field of microwave photonics, making the sub-terahertz range accessible to, e.g., 5G wireless communications, antenna remoting, Internet of Things, sensing, and more.
Highlights
Microwave photonic applications in the terahertz range are recently attracting a growing interest due to the need to find solutions for next-generation (5G) wireless communication systems capable of unprecedented data rates
We describe the experiments that have been performed to assess the frequency response of the plasmonic organic hybrid (POH)-Mach-Zehnder modulator (MZM) to electrical signals from 75 MHz up to 500 GHz onto an optical continuous-wave (CW) carrier
The results demonstrate that the nonlinear distortions from this modulator are in line with those of commercial Mach-Zehnder modulators optimized for analog photonic applications
Summary
Microwave photonic applications in the terahertz range are recently attracting a growing interest due to the need to find solutions for next-generation (5G) wireless communication systems capable of unprecedented data rates. We use them to demonstrate an analog radio-over-fiber (RoF) link up to 325 GHz, with >100 GHz bandwidth, only limited by our electrical measurement equipment This indicates that plasmonic modulators have a strong potential for digital communications but they can handle the stringent requirements needed for high-performance microwave photonics applications, communications, sensing, and more. We include (gray solid lines) the measurements from 75 MHz to 15 GHz, from 70 GHz to 95 GHz and from 115 GHz to 170 GHz, as reported by Hoessbacher et al., who obtained them with a similar POH-MZM device Both measurements have been normalized to their low frequency value to show that this kind of modulators feature a flat frequency response over the complete measurable spectral region and show no signs of bandwidth limitation. Full details on the experimental setups and the procedure used to measure the modulator response are reported in the supplementary material
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