An integrated acoustooptic Bragg heterodyning receiver module

A simple guided-wave architecture which utilizes wideband acoustooptic (AO) and electrooptic (EO) Bragg diffractions in cascade in an LiNbO₃ planar waveguide to perform efficient and wideband heterodyning detection, and thus realize integrated AO receiver modules, is described. A preliminary receiver module fabricated in a Y-cut LiNbO ₃ waveguide 1 mm×8 mm×20 mm in size and operated at the optical wavelength of 0.6328 μm has provided a bandwidth of 240 MHz centered at 350 MHz and single-tone instantaneous and two-tone third-order spurious free dynamic ranges of 44.6 and 36.0 dB, respectively. The working principles, design, fabrication, and measured results of the integrated AO heterodyning receiver module are presented