Silicon Integrated Microwave Photonic Mixer

By integrating cascaded silicon microring resonator modulators (MRMs) and a silicon-germanium photodetector on a single SOI chip, an ultra-compact integrated microwave photonic mixer with a footprint as small as 740 mm × 270 mm is proposed. Experimental results show that the LO/RF bandwidth of the mixer is 6–20 GHz, the IF bandwidth is 0–175 MHz, and its conversion efficiency is high than -12 dB. Our work leads to a significant reduction in device footprint compared to formerly reported discrete microwave photonic mixers or integrated mixers based on Mach-Zehnder modulators.