Triangular-shaped waveform generation with variable symmetry based on dual-polarization modulation

Abstract

Photonic generation of triangular-shaped waveform with variable symmetry based on dual-polarization modulation is proposed and demonstrated. Based on the external modulation method, a dual-polarization modulator is used to modulate the radio frequency signal to generate the needed optical signal. By setting the modulation index of the modulator and phase shift of phase shifters appropriately, the optical intensity of generated signal can equal approximately the first three terms of the Fourier series expansion of the ideal triangular-shaped waveform, so triangular-shaped waveforms with different symmetry factors can be generated. Most of previous triangular waveform generation schemes generate symmetrical triangular waveform or sawtooth waveform (sawtooth waveform can be regarded as an asymmetrical triangular waveform), and the symmetry factor is not tunable. The tunable range of symmetry factor of triangular-shaped waveform generated by this scheme can reach 0%–100%, which will greatly expand the application range of triangular-shaped waveforms. The root-mean-square error (RMSE) is introduced to measure the similarity between the generated waveform and the theoretical waveform. It can be found that theoretically the triangular-shaped waveform with a symmetry factor in a range from 14% to 86% has a good similarity to the ideal waveform (RMSE < 0.044), and the RMSE of the generated waveform in the simulation is also very close to the theoretical RMSE. Experimentally, the 4GHz triangular-shaped waveforms with different values of symmetry factor (20%–80%) are obtained by using 4GHz radio frequency signal.