Frequency up-conversion of optical microwaves for multichannel optical microwave system on a WDM network

We propose a multichannel optical microwave system employing a frequency up-converting optoelectronic oscillator (FU-OEO) [FU-OEO: frequency up-converting optoelectronic oscillator] as a low-phase noise local oscillator (LO) and a multichannel frequency up-converter. Employing the FU-OEO, we demonstrated an optical microwave system capable of 16 optical microwave links in the C-band on a WDM network; the generated optical microwaves were distributed to their designated remote stations according to the channel wavelength. When the FU-OEO was used as the system LO, the phase noise of the optical microwaves was under −80 dBc/Hz at a 10 kHz offset from a 20 GHz carrier frequency. As a frequency up-converter, the FU-OEO simultaneously up-converted all optical data channels at a 1.25 Gbps data rate for optical microwaves in the 20 GHz band of an optical carrier suppression mode having almost 100% modulation depth. The overall system performance was verified by measuring the bit error rates (BER) of the data recovered from optical microwaves received through single-mode fibers. The measured BER indicated that the system can transmit over 50 km with a power penalty of less than 1 dB. This method can be useful for high-frequency applications where the generation and transmission of optical microwaves are greatly restricted by optical or electrical bandwidths.

► We propose a multichannel optical microwave generation for a system on WDM network.
► A frequency up-converting optoelectronic oscillator works as an LO & up-converter.
► The modulation depth for the multiple optical microwaves is ∼100%.
► The phase noise of the 20 GHz optical microwaves is <−80 dBc/Hz at a 10 kHz offset.
► Transmission over 50.5 km on a WDM network shows a power penalty of <1 dB.