A novel optical millimeter-wave signal generation approach to overcome chromatic dispersion

In this paper, a novel frequency octupling approach for optical millimeter-wave signal generation to overcome chromatic dispersion is proposed and demonstrated. The frequency octupling mm-wave with the baseband signal carried only by −4th order sideband is generated by properly adjusting a series of parameters, which are the modulation constant, the gain of baseband signal, the direct current bias and the different phase of the modulation arms. As the optical millimeter-wave signal is transmitted along the fiber, there is no time shift caused by chromatic dispersion. Theoretical analyses and simulated results show that when the optical mm-wave carrying 2.5 Gbps baseband signal transmits a distance of over 110 km, the eye diagram still keeps open and clear. The power penalty is about 0.4 dB after the optical signal transmits over 40 km. In additions, given the +4th order sideband carries no data, a full-duplex RoF link based on wavelength reuse is built for the uplink. The bidirectional 2.5 Gbps baseband signal could successfully transmit over 40 km with about 0.8 dB power penalty in the simulation. Both theoretical analyses and simulation results show that the full-duplex RoF link has good performance.