Fiber stimulated Brillouin scattering-based microwave signal processing

Abstract

Microwave signal generation and processing such as frequency conversion are proposed and experimentally demonstrated based on stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) in single-mode fibers (SMFs). A simple scheme to generate microwave/millimeter-wave sources is realized by utilizing the optical heterodyne technique between an optical carrier and its Stokes light. Stable microwave sources with the frequencies of about 10.56 and 21.71 GHz are experimentally realized using the first- and second-order SBS frequency shifts based on standard SMFs. A microwave frequency up/down conversion method is presented without premodulation for bi-direction radio-over-fiber systems by using fiber SBS. The microwave signal of 1.5 GHz is experimentally up-converted to 9.06 and 12.06 GHz, and the microwave signal of 9 GHz is down-converted to 1.56 GHz, respectively.