Development of a Mach–Zehnder Modulator Photonic Local Oscillator Source

Author

Kubo, Derek Y. ; Srinivasan, Rajagopalan ; Kiuchi, Hitoshi ; Ming-Tang Chen

Author_Institution

Acad. Sinica Inst. of Astron. & Astrophys., Hilo, HI, USA

Volume

61

Issue

8

fYear

2013

fDate

Aug. 2013

Firstpage

3005

Lastpage

3014

Abstract

This paper describes the development of a photonic local oscillator (LO) source based on a three-stage Mach-Zehnder modulator (MZM) device. The MZM laser synthesizer demonstrates the feasibility of providing the photonic reference LO for the Atacama Large Millimeter Array telescope located in Chile. This MZM approach to generating an LO by RF modulation of a monochromatic optical source provides the merits of wide frequency coverage of 4-130 GHz, tuning speed of about 0.2 s, and residual integrated phase noise performance of 0.3° rms at 100 GHz.

Keywords

Mach-Zehnder interferometers; microwave photonics; millimetre wave oscillators; optical modulation; phase noise; Atacama Large Millimeter Array telescope; Chile; MZM laser synthesizer; Mach Zehnder modulator; RF modulation; frequency 100 GHz; frequency 4 GHz to 130 GHz; monochromatic optical source; photonic local oscillator source; three stage MZM device; Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA); Mach–Zehnder modulator (MZM); microwave oscillator; microwave photonics; optical modulation; phase noise; radio astronomy;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Microwave Theory and Techniques, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9480

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TMTT.2013.2268460

Filename

6552232