Development and performance analysis of a photonic-assisted RF amplifier

This work contributes to the area of microwave photonics applied to telecommunication systems in two ways. Initially, a photonic-assisted RF amplifier is proposed and experimentally validated. It takes advantage of the Four-wave Mixing (FWM) optical nonlinear effect, ensured by launching two high optical power carriers into a highly nonlinear fiber. The RF gain is defined as the difference between the electrical power photodetected using a FWM product and that from the conventional RoF system at the same optical power level. Experimental results demonstrate 24 dB gain after photodetection of the first FWM product. Furthermore, a performance analysis based on numerical simulations is reported in order to propose a high capacity intensity modulated radio over fiber architecture for future broadband access optical-wireless networks. Bit-error-rate curves of a 10 Gbit/s NRZ signal in different conditions of optical signal to noise ratio (OSNR) are presented for illustrating the applicability of the proposed photonics-based RF device.