Photonic Vector Signal Generation Employing a Single-Drive MZM-Based Optical Carrier Suppression Without Precoding

We propose and investigate a novel and simple photonic vector signal generation scheme at radio frequency bands enabled by a single-drive Mach-Zehnder modulator-based optical carrier suppression without precoding techniques and optical filter, which can reduce the complexity of transmitter digital signal processing. The generation and reception of 16/20/22-Gbaud quadrature-phase-shift-keying vector signals at 16/20/22 GHz are experimentally demonstrated, respectively. The measured bit-error ratio for 16 G-baud QPSK vector signals after transmitting over 10-km standard single mode fiber can be under 7% hard-decision forward-error-correction threshold of 3.8 × 10^-3. Moreover, compared to the conventional precoding scheme, the receiver sensitivity can be enhanced by 4 dB at both back-to-back and after 10-km SSMF transmission cases, which demonstrates the feasibility of this proposal, and show its potential promising application in radio over fiber system.