18 GHz traveling wave polymeric in-line fiber modulator

A radio frequency (RF) modulated optical fiber link is an attractive alternative to coaxial cables to distribute large bandwidth analog RF signals. A critical component necessary for applications such as antenna remoting is a fiber optic modulator with a large dynamic range. The dominant modulator in use today is the Mach-Zehnder which requires linearization schemes to achieve a large dynamic range. We present an alternative modulator configuration which can be tuned to an operating point where the second, third, and fourth order intermodulation products are minimized, thus yielding a large dynamic range without linearization schemes. This inline fiber modulator consists of an electro-optic (EO) waveguide deposited directly onto single mode fiber half coupler block