A Simple Photonic Generation of a Microwave Waveforms Scheme Based on a Dual-Polarization Dual-Drive Mach-Zehnder Modulator

Abstract

In this paper, a simple scheme for the generation of sawtooth, triangular, and square waveforms using an integrated dual-polarization dual-drive Mach-Zehnder modulator (Dpol-DDMZM) is proposed. By properly setting the working point and the modulation index of the Dpol-DDMZM, the desired microwave waveforms are easily obtained after photodetection. The proposed scheme for the photonic generation of microwave waveforms is analyzed both by simulation and experiment. The periodical sawtooth, triangular, and square waveforms with repetition rates of 8 GHz are successfully generated. The root-mean-square errors (RMSE) are 0.190, 0.168, and 0.135, respectively. The system features flexible tunability.