Simple and Flexible All-Optical Microwave Photonic Frequency Converter Based on Stimulated Brillouin Scattering Effect

Yue Wang,Wei Dong,Xindong Zhang,Weinan Zhou,Yujiao Ding,Tongtong Meng

doi:10.1109/jphot.2020.3021351

Abstract

We present a novel and simple scheme for all-optical microwave photonic frequency converter, free of electrical components, based on stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) effect. An SBS-based frequency shifter is incorporated to generate Stokes wave whose frequency is down-shifted by ν b , where ν b is defined as the Brillouin frequency shift. With a tunable optical passband filter, the up/down frequency conversion can be realized through the same structure. In the proof-of-concept experiment, the microwave signal at 1 to 15 GHz can be up-converted while the microwave signal at 11 to 29 GHz can be down-converted by the microwave photonic frequency converter. Moreover, the frequency and power stability of the generated signals are also investigated in three hours. To vindicate flexibility, low cost and easy implementation of the proposed all-optical setup, an experiment is carried out, and it turns out that only the frequency-to-be-converted signal source is needed while providing the ultra-wideband up/down conversion.

Highlights

Microwave photonic converter schemes are considered as promising applications in radar [1], wireless communication systems [2], modern electronic warfare receivers [3] and defense systems, owing to its inherent properties of ultrafast scanning, accurate beamforming and immunity to electromagnetic interference [4]
After the tunable optical bandpass filter (TBPF), an erbium-doped optical fiber amplifier (EDFA) operated at constant current control (ACC) mode is applied to compensate the insertion loss of the TBPF and the Mach–Zehnder modulators (MZMs)
We have demonstrated and experimentally proposed the principle of a novel and flexible all-optical microwave frequency photonic converter with ultra-wideband based on stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) and TBPF

Summary

Introduction

Microwave photonic converter schemes are considered as promising applications in radar [1], wireless communication systems [2], modern electronic warfare receivers [3] and defense systems, owing to its inherent properties of ultrafast scanning, accurate beamforming and immunity to electromagnetic interference [4]. On account of the strong nonlinear effects, such as four-wave mixing, cross-gain modulation, cross-polarization modulation and cross-phase modulation [8]–[11], the semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) is a promising device for realizing photonic frequency conversion. The main problem of SOA-based techniques is the poor signal quality after conversion To overcome these challenges, various methods have been intensively investigated, which is convenient to implement, such as using two cascaded Mach–Zehnder modulators (MZMs) [12], a pair of phase modulators (PMs) interrelate in series [4], and a dual-polarization dual-parallel Mach-Zehnder modulator (DP-DPMZM) technology [13] to up/down-convert the signal. Carrier suppressed single-sideband (CS-SSB) modulation is usually employed in frequency converters [16] They present a reconfigurable microwave photonic converter by means of using two modulators and optical filters. The electronic bottleneck effect and limited bandwidth can be solved since the all-optical microwave photonic frequency converter is free of electrical components

Operation Principle

Experimental Results

Summary and Conclusions