• Infrared and Laser Engineering
  • Vol. 50, Issue 7, 20211056 (2021)
Simin Li, Rong Cong, Xiaoxiao Yao, Jing Feng, Zhenzhou Tang, and Shilong Pan
Author Affiliations
  • Key Laboratory of Radar Imaging and Microwave Photonics, Ministry of Education, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing 211016, China
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    DOI: 10.3788/IRLA20211056 Cite this Article
    Simin Li, Rong Cong, Xiaoxiao Yao, Jing Feng, Zhenzhou Tang, Shilong Pan. Chip-based microwave photonic frequency mixer (Invited)[J]. Infrared and Laser Engineering, 2021, 50(7): 20211056 Copy Citation Text show less

    Abstract

    A microwave photonic frequency mixer constituted of an optically-carried local oscillator (LO) and a wavelength-division modulator was proposed. The wavelength-division modulator chip, which was consisted of a silicon phase modulator, two micro-ring filters, a photodetector, two optical couplers, and two grating couplers, was designed and fabricated. Based on the chip, a microwave photonic harmonic frequency mixer was implemented. In the experiment, an optically-carried LO was generated by double-sideband suppressed-carrier modulation at a Mach-Zehnder modulator. An RF signal from 6 to 16 GHz was successfully converted into a signal with a frequency of 33 to 23 GHz. In order to suppress the remaining mixing spurs, two solutions, i.e., increasing the rejection ratio of the micro-ring filter to decrease the intensity of the leaked optically-carried LO and introducing an optical phase shifter to correct the phase of the leaked optically-carried LO, were proposed and verified by simulation. It should be noted that the latter is simpler and more suitable for photonic integration.
    Simin Li, Rong Cong, Xiaoxiao Yao, Jing Feng, Zhenzhou Tang, Shilong Pan. Chip-based microwave photonic frequency mixer (Invited)[J]. Infrared and Laser Engineering, 2021, 50(7): 20211056
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