Abstract

An all-optical and ultra-wideband microwave in-phase/quadrature (I/Q) mixer, based on a dual-parallel Mach–Zehnder modulator and a wavelength division multiplexer, is proposed. Due to the simultaneous frequency down-conversion and 360-deg tunable phase shifting in the optical domain, the proposed I/Q mixer has the advantages of high conversion gain and excellent quadrature phase balance ($<\pm 1.3\text{deg}$) with a wide operating frequency from 10 to 40 GHz. Assisted by an analog or digital intermediate-frequency quadrature coupler, an image-reject frequency down-converter is then implemented, with an image rejection exceeding 50 dB over the working band.

© 2017 Optical Society of America

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