Photonic generation of frequency quadrupling signal for millimeter-wave communication utilizing three parallel Mach-Zehnder modulators

In this work, we propose a new scheme of generating high quality frequency quadrupling signal for millimeter-wave wireless communication system. The frequency quadrupling scheme is achieved by using three parallel Mach-Zehnder modulators (MZMs) and an optical phase shifter. The first two MZMs are driven by the RF signals to operate at the maximum transmission point. The third MZM is operated with no RF signal and an extra p-phase difference is introduced for it by the optical phase shifter. The advantage of the proposed scheme is that the optical carrier and the fourth optical sideband can be suppressed simultaneously. The performance of proposed scheme is investigated theoretically and evaluated by simulations. Numerical results show that the radio frequency spurious suppression ratio (RFSSR) higher than 44.18 dB and the optical sideband suppression ratio (OSSR) higher than 21 dB can be obtained without optical filter when the extinction ratio (ER) of the MZM is 30 dB. The impact of the non-ideal RF driven voltage and phase difference of RF driven signal applied to the first two sub-MZMs on OSSR and RFSSR is also discussed and analyzed.