Photonic generation of microwave frequency shift keying signal using a single-drive Mach-Zehnder modulator

We propose and experimentally demonstrate a new scheme for photonic generation of microwave frequency shift keying (FSK) signal by employing one single-drive Mach-Zehnder modulator (MZM). In the proposed method, an electrical signal with different radio frequency (RF) amplitudes and direct current (DC) components for bit '0' and bit '1' is generated. After amplification, the signal is fed into a single-drive MZM which is biased at the quadrature and null points of its transmission curve for bit '0' and bit '1', respectively. Due to the different RF amplitudes, a microwave FSK signal can be obtained after photodetection, where the space frequency is the same as the RF frequency and the mark frequency is twice as large as the RF frequency. The feasibility of the proposed scheme is verified by a proof-of-concept experiment. 5/10-GHz and 10/20-GHz microwave FSK signals with different bit rates are successfully demonstrated.