Abstract

We experimentally investigate a high-linearity analog photonic link based on polarization-modulation in-phase/quadrature ($I/Q$) intensity-demodulation. In the proposed system, a light wave with its polarization direction oriented at an angle of $45°$ with respect to the principal axis of the polarization modulator (PolM) is polarization modulated by a drive signal. In the receiver, the polarization-modulated signal is split into two paths using a $50:50$ optical coupler (OC). In each path, a polarization beam splitter (PBS) is connected to the PolM via a polarization controller (PC) to realize the in-phase and quadrature signal, respectively. Thanks to the polarization-modulation to intensity- modulation conversion, the fluctuation of the optical phase noise has no impact on the coherent signals. In addition, the use of a single PolM allows the link avoids the matching requirements of dual modulator schemes. The linearization leads to suppression of the third-order intermodulation (IMD3) by more than $40\mathrm{dB}$, compared to the quadrature signal. Experimental results show that the link gain is $-11.5\mathrm{dB}$, noise figure is $26.5\mathrm{dB}$, and the third-order limited spurious free dynamic range (SFDR) is $124\mathrm{dB}$ in a $1\mathrm{Hz}$ bandwidth.

© 2011 Optical Society of America

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