High conversion efficiency microwave photonic mixer based on stimulated Brillouin scattering carrier suppression...

A new microwave photonic mixer that can achieve a high conversion efficiency is presented. It is based on using the stimulated Brillouin scattering loss spectrum to suppress the optical carrier at the output of two optical phase modulators driven by the RF signal and the LO, respectively. Experimental results are presented, which demonstrate a high conversion efficiency of 11.3 dB corresponding to over 26 dB improvement compared to the conventional dual-series Mach-Zehnder modulator based microwave photonic mixer, and wide bandwidth of 0.2 to 20 GHz mixing operation.