A Novel and Tunable Frequency-Upconversion Based on FP-LD Injection of One Low Bit-Rate Signal Without Any RF Local Oscillator

An all-optical frequency-upconversion is presented by injecting a low bit rate signal into a Fabry-Pérot laser diode (FP-LD) without any radio-frequency local oscillator. One of the FP-LD lasing modes is locked by generated sideband through four-wave-mixing effect in FP-LD. The generated microwave subcarrier could be tunable by varying the power and polarization of the injected signal. The input signal at the data rate of 1.25, 2.5, and 2.7 Gb/s with nonreturn-to-zero format are upconverted to a subcarrier modulation signal at upcoversion frequencies of 20, 10, and 16.2 GHz, respectively. The single sideband phase noise of -81.2 and -87.7 dBc/Hz (10-kHz frequency deviation) at 16.2-GHz subcarrier are demonstrated. The difference of sidemode suppression ratio at the FP-LD output point is also analyzed.