The applications of optical amplifiers such as erbium-doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs) and semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs) are inevitable in most optical transmission links. These optical amplifiers employed in a transmission link will provide amplification to the optical signals to be transmitted, at the same time the amplifiers will also add amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) noise to the amplified optical signals. In radio-over-fiber systems, optical links are used to distribute high quality radio frequency (RF) signal, microwave signal or millimeter-wave (mm-wave) signal over optical fiber for low loss long-distant transmission. In this paper, the effects of amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) noise of optical amplifiers on the quality of the optically generated electrical signals are theoretically studied.
The nonlinear effects of an electro-optic intensity modulator in an optical up-conversion system for millimeter-wave (mm-wave) over fiber applications are investigated in this paper. In the analysis, general nonlinearities caused by the Mach-Zehnder modulator used for optical up-conversion are analyzed and discussed. Electrical fields of the up-converted optical signal are expressed in power series form, which are widely used in electronics in expressing memoryless nonlinearity. Harmonic distortion and inter-modulation distortion generated in an optical up-conversion, a scheme recently proposed for mm-wave over fiber applications, are analyzed in detail. One-tone and two-tone measurements are performed to validate the analyses based on our newly proposed optical up-conversion configuration.
Software Defined Radio (SDR), a radio that provides software control of a variety of modulation techniques over a broad frequency range, is an emerging technology that offers numerous advantages over conventional radio designs. With SDR, one would implement a common hardware platform and accommodate the different communications standards and technologies via software modules and firmware. This platform must be compatible with the high degree of versatility of SDR-based communication systems. SDR technology is being promoted by the US Department of Defence to replace tens of thousands of single protocol, single use radios with a common platform that could be reprogrammed to ensure interoperability. Military and public safety organisations from around the world are also considering this technology to solve their interoperability problems.
Although SDR can be easily implemented below 6 GHz using conventional electronics, it is increasingly difficult to do so at the higher operating frequencies proposed by many new wireless and SATCOM standards. To take full advantage of the SDR concept, a hardware platform is required that is capable of continuous operation from frequencies where electrical sources have difficulty providing continuously tunable operation, up to 60 GHz. In addition, various signal modulation schemes will need to be supported.
We present here a prototype for such a transmitter based on optical technology. It can generate a RF carrier tunable from about 18 to more than 40 GHz, which can be modulated using both intensity and phase modulation techniques. Simulations and experimental results are presented.
Distribution of millimeter-wave signals over optical fiber has been considered a promising technology for future broadband wireless access networks, thanks to the low loss and broad bandwidth of optical fibers operating at the 1550 nm window. Different schemes have been proposed to distribute millimeter-wave signals using optical fiber, which include intensity modulation and direct detection (IM/DD) scheme and remote heterodyne (RHD) scheme. In a millimeter-wave-over-fiber system using IM/DD scheme, two sidebands located at the two sides of the optical carrier are generated. For frequencies higher than 20 GHz, the chromatic dispersion becomes a serious problem which leads to high power penalty. The dispersion problem can be solved if RHD scheme is used. In an RHD scheme, two wavelengths that are phase correlated are generated using single-side band with carrier modulation, optical carrier-suppressed modulation, optical offset injection locking or optical offset phase locking of two laser sources. Ideally, the laser sources are considered to have very narrow linewidth, which will not introduce phase noise at the remote side when beating the two wavelengths. However, in real applications laser diodes usually have a finite linewidth, which leads to the phase de-correlation in the fiber links; phase noise is then generated at the remote end. In this paper, we will analyze the effects of the finite linewidth of optical sources on the performance of millimeter-wave over fiber systems. Simulation and experimental results will be provided.
The effective bandwidth of a wireless communication system is proportional to the carrier frequency, shifting the operating frequency of the wireless system from the crowded microwave L and S bands to the unregulated mm-wave band is a trend for future broadband wireless services. Intensity modulation and direct detection scheme (IM/DD) has been considered a simple method to impose a millimeter-wave signal onto optical fiber. However, for systems using IM/DD, the chromatic dispersion introduce significant power penalty, which limits the transmission distance. Remote heterodyne schemes have been proposed to solve the dispersion problem. Several approaches have been proposed to generate two phase-correlated optical wavelengths that are separated at a required millimeter-wave frequency. These approaches include single-side band with carrier modulation, optical carrier-suppressed modulation, optical offset injection locking and optical offset phase locking of two laser sources. All these methods provides phase-correlated optical wavelengths, but with complicated system configuration and high system cost. In this paper, we propose a simple method to generate phase-correlated wavelengths using a phase modulator and two fiber Bragg gratings. Two wavelengths are generated by modulating the phase modulator with an RF frequency. The required millimeter-wave signal is obtained by selecting two sidebands using the two narrowband fiber Bragg gratings. Theoretical analysis and experimental results will be reported in the paper.
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