Photonic Integrated Frequency Shifter Based on Double Side Band Modulation: Performance Analysis

Abstract

In this research, we present an analysis of a photonic integrated frequency shifter as a stage for a THz dual comb generator. We studied the performance of the PIC by simulating it with standard building blocks, and aimed toward an improvement of the output signal quality. We revised two approaches of the PIC by simulating two modes of generating a double side band modulation suppressed carrier (DSB-SC) with a Mach Zehnder modulator structure (MZM). One approach was using a single Electro-Optic Phase Modulator (EOPM) on an MZM structure (SE-MZM), and the other one was using Double EOPM (DE-MZM). We found a cleaner spectrum with the DE-MZM, since this structure is usually applied to reduce the chirp effect in optical communication systems. We obtained 23 dB of side mode suppression ratio SMSR with one filter, and 44 dB of SMSR with a two-stage filter. In the case of DE-MZM, we obtained a clean tone on intermediate frequency (IF) free of spurious sidebands and comb in IF frequency with 10 dB more power compared to SE-MZM.