Tunable 360° photonic radio frequency phase shifter based on optical quadrature double-sideband modulation and differential detection

Abstract

We propose a novel structure of a photonic RF phase shifter based on the vector-sum principle. The optical signal with quadrature double-sideband modulation passes through a dual-output Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI), and the two outputs are differentially detected. Two phase-quadrature RF terms are generated, and their amplitudes can be controlled in a triangularly complementary way by changing the phase of the MZI. A full tuning range of 0°-360° at 14 GHz is demonstrated experimentally accompanied by nearly constant RF amplitude. The validity of using our scheme in all-optical RF phase modulation is also verified.