An Optical Millimeter-Wave Generation Technique Based on Phase Modulation and Brillouin-Assisted Notch-Filtering

A novel approach to generate continuously tunable microwave and millimeter-wave (mm-wave) signals is proposed and experimentally demonstrated based on an optical phase modulator and a Brillouin-assisted notch-filtering technique. The strong optical carrier of the phase modulated signal is deeply suppressed by using stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) in a dispersion-shifted-fiber ring while the sidebands keep unchanged. Therefore, only even-order electrical harmonics exist at the output of a photodetector. As this SBS-assisted carrier-filter is narrow bandwidth and wavelength-independent, a wavelength-flexible way of optical generation mm-wave signals can be successfully realized.