Title :
An electrooptic intensity modulator with improved linearity
Author :
Farwell, Mark L. ; Lin, Zong-Qi ; Wooten, Ed ; Chang, William S C
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., California Univ., San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA
Abstract :
A highly linear electrooptic modulator has been designed, fabricated, and evaluated. The design of this modulator consists of only a simple modification to the directional coupler. Two-tone testing has demonstrated that, for an optical modulation depth of 30% per channel, the third-order intermodulation distortion is more than 30 dB lower than that of the conventional directional coupler or Mach-Zehnder modulators. This improvement was not observed to be accompanied by any increase in second harmonic distortion. Also included are results of two-tone computer simulations which predict the improvement in linearity of this device for a range of modulation depths.<>
Keywords :
directional couplers; electro-optical devices; optical modulation; design; directional coupler; electrooptic intensity modulator; improved linearity; optical modulation depth; second harmonic distortion; third-order intermodulation distortion; two tone testing; two-tone computer simulations; Bandwidth; Computer simulation; Couplings; Directional couplers; Electrooptic modulators; Feedforward systems; Intensity modulation; Laser stability; Linearity; Optical modulation;
Journal_Title :
Photonics Technology Letters, IEEE
