A novel approach to photonic generation of RF binary digital modulation signals

A novel approach to photonically generate binary digital modulation radio frequency (RF) signals is proposed. In the proposed system, the short optical pulses are converted into high frequency RF signals based on optical pulse shaping followed by dispersion induced frequency-to-time mapping technique. And the generated signals are coded using a fast electro-optical switch based on polarization modulation. By properly configuring the system, binary digital modulation signals, including amplitude-shift keying (ASK), frequency-shift keying (FSK) and phase-shift keying (PSK) with required bit pattern are generated in the optical domain. A model describing the signal generation system is derived, which is verified via both simulations and a proof-of-concept experiment.