Phys.org September 26, 2023
The highest frequency achievable for microwave signals is limited by the bandwidths of optoelectronic devices. To maximize the microwave frequency with a limited bandwidth of a photodetector (PD) and relieve the bandwidth bottleneck, researchers in China proposed to generate microwave signals with the single sideband (SSB) format by beating a continuous wave (CW) light with an optical SSB signal. By simply adjusting the frequency difference between the CW light and the carrier of the optical SSB signal, the frequency of the generated microwave SSB signal was changed correspondingly. In the experiment, amplitude shift keying (ASK) microwave signals with the SSB format were successfully generated with different carrier frequencies and coding bit rates, and the recovered coding information agreed with the original pseudo random binary sequence (PRBS) of 27 − 1 bits. According to the researchers their approach can significantly relieve the bandwidth restriction set by optoelectronic devices in high-speed microwave communication systems… read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Graphical abstract. Credit: Front. Optoelectron. 16, 20 (2023)