Studies in an optical millimeter-wave generation scheme via two parallel dual-parallel Mach–Zehnder modulators

Abstract

A novel filterless optical millimeter-wave generation scheme via two parallel dual-parallel Mach–Zehnder modulators (MZMs) is proposed. Theoretical analysis suggests that it can be used for the generation of millimeter-wave signal with octupling or 16-tupling of the local oscillator. An 80 GHz millimeter-wave is generated by octupling of a 10 GHz RF oscillator, or 16-tupling of a 5 GHz RF oscillator. Several influence factors on the performance of the optical sideband suppression ratio (OSSR) and the radio frequency spurious suppression ratio (RFSSR) are numerically studied. Simulation results show that the generated millimeter-wave can keep good performance, especially for octupling millimeter-wave generation; its performance is stable and insensitive to the extinction ratio of MZMs and the DC bias drift.