Experimental Demonstration of Mixed-Polarization to Linearize Electro-Absorption Modulators in Radio-Over-Fiber Links

Author

Hraimel, Bouchaib ; Zhang, Xiupu ; Jiang, Wei ; Wu, Ke ; Liu, Taijun ; Xu, Tiefeng ; Nie, Qiuhua ; Xu, Kun

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Concordia Univ., Montreal, QC, Canada

Volume

23

Issue

4

fYear

2011

Firstpage

230

Lastpage

232

Abstract

We experimentally investigate optical mixed polarization for the linearization of an electro-absorption modulator (EAM) in radio-over-fiber links. A linear polarizer is used before and after a polarization-dependent EAM. Thus, both transverse-electric and transverse-magnetic polarized lights are simultaneously modulated by different amounts. By carefully optimizing two polarization angles, the third-order intermodulation distortion (IMD3) is suppressed. The linearization leads to suppression of the IMD3 by more than 16 dB and improvement of spurious-free dynamic range by 8.1 and 9.5 dB for back-to-back and after 20 km of fiber transmission, respectively, compared to the nonlinearization case.

Keywords

electroabsorption; electromagnetic wave polarisation; intermodulation distortion; radio-over-fibre; EAM linearization; IMD3 suppression; electro-absorption modulator; linear polarizer; optical mixed polarization; polarization angle; radio-over-fiber links; third-order intermodulation distortion; transverse-electric polarized light; transverse-magnetic polarized light; Electro-absorption modulator (EAM); RF photonics; optical fiber communications; radio-over-fiber (RoF); wireless communications;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Photonics Technology Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1041-1135

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/LPT.2010.2098474

Filename

5664766