Radio frequency photonic in-phase and quadrature-phase vector modulation

Abstract

The focus of this thesis is to investigate the implementation of Radio Frequency (RF) In-Phase and Quadrature-Phase (I/Q) vector modulation through the use of modern photonic components and sub-systems which offer extremely wide RF intrinsic bandwidths. All-electronic vector modulators suffer from frequency coverage limitations and amplitude and phase instability due to components such as phase shifters and variable gain controllers operating at or near 100\% bandwidth. In stark contrast, once an RF signal has been modulated onto an optical carrier, the percent bandwidth of the RF to carrier is typically less than 0.01\% percent.

The fundamental mechanisms and basic electronic and photonic components needed to achieve vector modulation is introduced first. The primary electrical component required in most architectures is the 90° RF hybrid coupler, which is required to generate the RF I and Q terms. The two primary photonic building blocks, aside from the laser, electro-optic modulator and demodulator, are Mach-Zehnder Modulators (MZM) and Variable Optical Attenuators (VOA). Through the utilization of these components, multiple past architectures are explored and multiple new architectures are designed simulated.

For each architecture, there is a discussion on the practical implementation. Considerations such as system complexity, integration, and sensitivity to unwanted environmental stimuli are taken into account with potential solutions to alleviate these risks. In closing, the noise figure and its impact on Spur-Free Dynamic Range (SFDR) for a basic RF photonic link is derived to provide a system-level figure of merit that can be used, in most RF applications, to determine the overall performance utility current and future designs.