A novel photonics-assisted method for frequency up/down conversion with tunable optoelectronic oscillator (OEO) and phase shift is presented based on an integrated dual-polarization dual-parallel MachZehnder modulator (DP-DPMZM). The local oscillator (LO) signal with high spectral purity and low phase noise is generated by an OEO loop in one of the sub-DPMZMs. The frequency can be adjusted by an electrical band-pass filter (EBPF). The radio frequency (RF) signal is injected into another sub-DPMZM. The carrier-suppressed single-sideband (CS-SSB) modulation of both LO and RF signals is achieved. The phase of converted signal can be tuned by an integrated dual-channel phase modulator (DPM). The frequency up/down conversion can be switched by tuning a single bias voltage of the DP-DPMZM. Multiple functions including tunable LO, up/down conversion and phase shift can be realized. Meanwhile the dispersion-induced power fading is well compensated due to the CS-SSB modulation. In experiments, the tunable LO signal from 5 to 18 GHz, with the sidemode suppression ratio as high as 46.1 dB and the phase noise of 104.5 dBc/Hz@10 kHz at 10 GHz is generated successfully. The spur suppression ratios of the up/down converted signals are 32.6 dB and 35.6 dB respectively. The up/down conversion performance for RF carrying 16 quadrature amplitude modulation (16-QAM) signal is also investigated. The phase shifting of dual-channel converted signals can be varied continuously and independently in the range of 360 and the phase deviation is 1.8. The proposed compact link is characterized by function multiplexing and inherent dispersion compensation.

We propose and fabricate an ultrafast and high extinction ratio 1×4 optical switch based on a cascade, dual-output Mach–Zehnder interferometer (MZI) on the lithium niobate platform. The optical switch consists of cascaded, identical, dual-output MZI structures, and each of them includes a Y-branch waveguide, two parallel interference arms (electrode action area), and a 3 dB directional coupler. Four output optical paths can be switched through three groups of electrode hierarchical modulation. The test results of the fabricated device show that the insertion loss of each port is less than 7.1 dB and that the maximum extinction ratio is higher than 39.3 dB. The optical switch can achieve a high extinction ratio greater than 20 dB within the 50 nm wavelength range. The measured half-wave voltage is less than 4.13 V, and the minimum switching rise and fall times reach 125 ps and 250 ps, respectively. This result shows that the proposed and fabricated 1×4 integrated optical switch on a lithium niobate platform has the advantages of a fast response rate, high extinction ratio, and low switching voltage.

Microwave photonic phase-shifting technology can be used to generate high-frequency, broadband, and tunable phase-coded microwave signals, which are helpful in solving the contradiction between the detection range and the range resolution in radar systems. A method for generating a reconfigurable carrier phase-coded signal of a fundamental or doubled carrier frequency, based on polarization multiplexed technology, is proposed and verified by the experiments in this paper. A dual-parallel dual-polarization Mach–Zehnder modulator (DP-DPMZM) and a polarization-dependent phase modulator (PD-PM) were used to load the carrier and the phase-shifting signal, respectively. By reasonably configuring the state of the RF switch and the bias voltages of the sub-DPMZM, the fundamental or doubled carrier frequency can be obtained through photoelectric conversion. The reconfigurable carrier frequency gives the system a wider work bandwidth range and can effectively reduce the frequency requirement for local oscillator (LO) signals. By adjusting the driving voltage, the broadband microwave signal can be phase-shifted within the range of 360°, and when the phase-shifted control signal is a multilevel amplitude signal, it can generate binary, quaternary, or other high-order phase-coded signals, which have high reconfigurable performance and potential application value in multifunctional radar systems. In addition, the scheme has wideband tunability, since no optical filter is involved. The proposed scheme was theoretically analyzed and experimentally verified. Binary, quaternary, and octal phase-coded signals, with fundamental and doubled frequencies centered at 8 GHz and 16 GHz, were successfully generated.

A photonic microwave down-conversion approach is proposed and experimentally demonstrated based on a Mach-Zehnder modulator paralleled with a phase modulator. The incident radio frequency signal and the local oscillator signal are feed to the MZM and PM, respectively, and these two modulated optical signals interfere in the coupler. The useless higher-order sidebands are removed by a tunable optical band-pass filter. The principle of microwave frequency down-conversion is analyzed theoretically, the MZM and PM paralleled frequency down-conversion system is built. Then the performance of system is tested, and the experimental results show that the spurious-free dynamic range achieves 104.8 dB:Hz^2/3. Compared to the conventional MZM-MZM cascaded system, the SFDR has been improved by 16 dB. The MZM and PM paralleled frequency down-conversion system can balance the intensity of the two coherent beams easily, and only single DC bias is needed. The proposed method possesses simple structure and high dynamic range.

To enhance the end-face coupling efficiency of lithium niobate on insulator (LNOI) chips, in conjunction with current device fabrication processes, a stepped spot size converter (SSC) based on a special outer envelope profile has been proposed and investigated. This stepped SSC can reduce the coupling loss between the LNOI waveguide and a normal single-mode optical fiber. First, the output waveguide of a mode converter was proposed and simulated, in which the mode field had the biggest overlapping integral factor with a single-mode fiber (MDF ≈ 9.8 μm). Then, a stepped LNOI waveguide, the basic structure of the mode converter, with three kinds of outer envelope profile, was proposed and analyzed. Through analysis of the impacts of different envelope profiles on mode spot conversion efficiency, the relationship between envelope profile and propagation efficiency was obtained. Additionally, the rule of LNOI stair height variation tendency and the pattern of mode spot conversion efficiency for the multi-step mode spot converter in LNOI were obtained. Ultimately, a stepped SSC with a COS-shaped envelope curve was adopted. When this stepped SSC is coupled to single-mode fiber with a mode-field diameter of 9.8 μm, the coupling efficiency of the TE mode was 95.35% at the wavelength of 1550 nm.

A photonics-assisted binary/quaternary phase-coded microwave signal generator with fundamental/doubling reconfigurable carrier frequency applicable to digital I/O interfaces is proposed and has been verified by experiments. This scheme is based on a cascade modulation scheme, which is used to reconfigure fundamental/doubling carrier frequency and load the phase-coded signal, respectively. By controlling the radio frequency (RF) switch and the bias voltages of the modulator, the switching of the fundamental or doubling carrier frequency can be realized. When the amplitudes and sequence pattern of the two independent coding signals are set reasonably, binary or quaternary phase-coded signals can be realized. The sequence pattern of coding signals is applicable to digital I/O interfaces and can be directly generated through the IO interfaces of FPGA instead of an expensive high-speed arbitrary waveform generator (AWG) or other digital-to-analog conversion (DAC) systems. A proof-of-concept experiment is carried out, and the performance of the proposed system is evaluated from the aspects of phase recovery accuracy and pulse compression capability. In addition, the influence of residual carrier suppression and polarization crosstalk in non-ideal states on phase shifting based on polarization adjustment has also been analyzed.