Abstract

We propose and experimentally demonstrate a simple and compact photonic scheme to obtain frequency-multiplicated microwave signal based on a single integrated silicon Mach– Zehnder modulator (MZM). Using the fabricated integrated MZM, we also demonstrate the feasibility of microwave amplitude-shift keying (ASK) modulation based on integrated photonic approach. In a proof-of-concept experiment, 2 GHz frequency-doubled microwave signal is generated using a 1 GHz driving signal. And 750 MHz/1 GHz frequency-tripled/quadrupled microwave signals are obtained with a driving signal of 250 MHz. In addition, a 50 Mb/s binary amplitude coded 1 GHz microwave signal is also successfully generated. Using the state-of-art MZM with pn-type diode structure, the frequency of the generated microwave signals is expected to be enhanced to one hundred GHz.

© 2015 Optical Society of America