Transmit-isolating photonic receivers with high isolation, large dynamic range based on reverse single-sideband modulation

Abstract

Two kinds of transmit-isolating photonic receiver (TIPRx) systems with high isolation, large dynamic range based on reverse single-sideband (SSB) modulation are proposed and demonstrated. For the single dual-drive modulator (DD-MZM), the transmit signal allows less leakage of the RF power to the PD compared with the reverse double-sideband (DSB) modulation, thanks to the reduction in the number of the sidebands beating with the center carrier, while the forward DSB modulation benefits the high-quality response of the receive signal. Experimental results demonstrate that the average isolation is increased by 3–4 dB through suppressing the sideband intensity of the counter-propagation modulation, and the system has an isolation greater than 15 dB within 4–24 GHz. In addition, the spurious-free dynamic range (SFDR) of 98.31 dB·HZ2/3 is achieved. The parallel DD-MZMs scheme is put forward to improve the isolation and SFDR simultaneously, through the accurate cancellation of the reverse sidebands and third-order intermodulation (IMD3) components. The simulation result proves that the parallel architecture can suppress the reverse response and IMD3 effectively, and has the null of 0.10 for the isolation and the null of 0.20 for the IMD3 components when the optical power ratio is 0.9. The proposed technique can find applications in analog and digital communication.