14.6-GHz LiNbO/sub 3/ microdisk photonic self-homodyne RF receiver

Abstract

Abstract-Nonlinear optical modulation combined with simultaneous photonic and RF resonance in an LiNbO 3 microdisk modulator is used to create a self-homodyne photonic RF receiver. Carrier and sidebands are mixed in the optical domain, and the modulated optical signal is detected using a photodetector. The photodetector has a bandwidth matched to the baseband signal. It filters out the high-frequency components and generates the baseband photocurrent. Receiver operation is demonstrated by demodulating up to 100-Mb/s digital data from a 14.6-GHz carrier frequency without any high-speed electronic components. A bit error rate of 10 9 is measured for 10-Mb/s downconverted digital data at 15-dBm received RF power. Preliminary results of employing this photonic RF receiver in a short-distance -band wireless link demonstrate the potential of using high-quality optical microresonators in RF receiver applications.

Nonlinear and Quantum Optics with Whispering Gallery Resonators

“…For WGM resonators, this approach was initially proposed in [271,272]. It was shown that it is possible to confine the microwave field in a metal resonator built on a top of an optical resonator to achieve the desirable phase matching [271][272][273][274][275][276][277][278][279][280]. In a similar way it is possible to control the modulation process with high flexibility, e.g.…”

“…In addition to the light modulation leading to generation of optical harmonics, resonant WGM EOMs can be used as quadratic receivers of the microwave field [279,280]. The operation principle of such devices is based on a nonlinear absorption of the input light, which increases proportionally to the microwave signal power.…”

Photonic RF Down-Converter Based on Optomechanical Oscillation

“…Note that previously a self-homodyne RF photonic receiver was demonstrated based on nonlinear modulation in an electrooptic microdisk [4]. However, in that architecture, the LO is eliminated by using the transmitted carrier modulation format and as a result it suffers from low power efficiency as well as incompatibility with standard RF transceivers for long-distance communication.…”

Microphotonic RF Receiver Components

“…We have published a number of papers describing our work of both part I and part II of this research program [23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33].…”