Experimental demonstration of tunable optical single sideband modulation and 1.5 Gb/s RoF downlink using stimulated Brillouin scattering

A frequency-tunable optical radio-frequency signal generation and broadband data upconversion technique with single sideband modulation for radio-over-fiber (RoF) systems is experimentally demonstrated. The proposed technique is based on optical processing an optical double sideband (DSB) modulated signal by using double stimulated Brillouin scattering interaction. On the one hand, a dual-electrode Mach–Zehnder modulator is used to realize broadband data upconversion. On the other hand, a fiber Bragg grating is applied to improve the optical carrier suppression ratio and avoid the effect of residual optical harmonics. By using this method, a broadband radio-frequency signal range from 5 to 40 GHz with the undesired sideband suppression ratio over 58 dB is experimentally demonstrated. In addition, the transmission performance of the 1.5 Gb/s RoF downlink is also examined. The power penalty is less than 1 dB at the bit-error rate of 10−10 after 50 km single-mode fiber transmission.