Tunable Carrier Generation and Broadband Data Upconversion for RoF Systems Based on Stimulated Brillouin Scattering

We present a frequency-tunable RF carrier generation and broadband data upconversion technique for radio-over-fiber (RoF) systems. A dual-parallel Mach-Zehnder modulator is used to realize single-mode modulation (SMM). On the other hand, frequency-tunable RF carrier generation with single-sideband (SSB) modulation is performed using stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) with three types of configuration. The optical carrier-to-sideband ratio of the SMM-SSB modulated signal can be adjusted to achieve the best received sensitivity performance of the RoF system by simply modifying the pump power in the SBS process. Finally, the transmission performance of the RoF downlink system is examined. The power penalty is less than 1 dB at the bit-error rate of 10^-9 after 25-km single-mode fiber transmission.