The performance of a traveling wave Mach-Zehnder external optical modulator (EOM) mixer is described and compared with a conventional diode mixer's performance. Additionally, by incorporating external circuitry, the EOM mixer can provide single sideband suppression in addition to the inherent local oscillator suppression. The basic frequency mixing function of the EOM mixer is first described theoretically and then extended to the sideband suppression case. The performance of both configurations is also presented. Achievable electrical isolation between LO (carrier) and RF (upconverted data signal at LOIF) frequencies is greater than 95 dB and total link conversion loss is 37 dB in this demonstration with a laser diode source. Sideband suppression of greater than 43 dB with respect to the desired sideband at the photodetector output is achieved.

This paper proposes the laser diode receiving mixer which utilizes the laser diode nonlinearity. The laser diode receiving mixer can make the bidirectional fiber optic link simple and cost-effective. These laser diodes are applied to configure the LD-LD MIX link which consists of two laser diodes, two local oscillators, two microwave switches and one fiber cable. The LD-LD MIX link configuration is extended to introduce novel two fiber optic links, i.e. the local suppression link and the image cancellation link. These links utilize the combination of microwave circuits and optical devices. These configurations are experimentally investigated at microwave frequencies and the QPSK signal transmission is successfully demonstrated.

A coplanar-type TW electrode is analyzed for the use within a Ti:LiNbO3 optical modulator. The quasistatic analysis is developed based on the variational principle and the incremental inductance formula. The anisotropy of the LiNbO3, the effect of the SiO2 buffer layer, the overlaid conductor and the electrode thickness can be taken into consideration easily by using the extended spectral domain approach (ESDA) as the formulation procedure. It is shown numerically that the TW electrodes thickness, t, and the overlay spacing, p, are as dominant as the buffer layer thickness d, i.e., the microwave effective index and the product ΔfL is affected significantly by the electrodes thickness t and the overlay spacing, whereas the product VπL is insensitive. Therefore, the introduction of the overlaid conductor and the use of thicker electrodes can be utilized effectively to achieve higher values of the figure of merit Δf/Vπ.