Photonic Aggregation of Microwave Signals Based on Phase and Amplitude Control Using a Dual-Polarization Dual-Drive Mach-Zehnder Modulator

Photonic aggregation of microwave signals using a single dual-polarization dual-drive Mach-Zehnder modulator (DP-DDMZM) is proposed and investigated experimentally. Multiple microwave signals are applied to a DP-DDMZM and modulated on a single optical carrier. Four binary phase shift keying (BPSK) microwave signals with an identical carrier frequency of 15 GHz and a symbol rate of 1 GBaud are aggregated to be a single 16 quadrature amplitude modulation (16QAM) optical signal. On the receiver side, the aggregated multiple microwave signals are decoded simultaneously by a single optical coherent receiver. A proof-of-concept experiment is conducted to verify the effectiveness of the proposed technique. The aggregation of four BPSK microwave signals with an error vector magnitude (EVM) of 7.09% is realized.