Analysis of an optical mm-wave generation scheme with frequency octupling using two cascaded Mach–Zehnder modulators

We propose a novel method to generate optical mm-wave signals with frequency octupling using two cascaded Mach–Zehnder modulators (MZMs). First, the scheme is investigated both theoretically and by simulation, and results show that an 80 GHz mm-wave is generated by a 10 GHz RF oscillator. Then, an analytical expression is developed to describe the performance of the scheme. The influences caused by non-ideal factors are discussed in detail, and undesired sidebands suppression ratios are plotted and analyzed. At last a RoF system using the mm-wave generation scheme is demonstrated and its BER curves indicate that the performance of the system is still good even if the parameters deviate from the ideal values to a certain degree.