QAM Vector mm-Wave Signal Generation Based on Optical Orthogonal Polarization SSB Scheme By a Single Modulator

Millimeter-wave (mm-wave) has become an attractive technique in the fifth generation (5G) because it meets the demand of explosive increase in data traffic. In this study, we propose and demonstrate the generation of quadrature amplitude modulated (QAM) vector mm-wave signal employing optical orthogonal polarization single sideband (SSB) modulation, which employs a single polarization-division multiplexing Mach–Zehnder modulator (PDM-MZM). Based on our scheme, there is no inter-band crosstalk and inter-polarization signal-signal beat interference (SSBI). In our scheme, the two sub-modulators in PDM-MZM both work within their linear modulation range. After PDM-MZM, the two optical SSB signals are orthogonally polarized. By using an interleaver (IL), the low sideband (LSB) and upper sideband (USB) optical signals in the two polarization directions are extracted respectively. In addition, IL also suppresses the unwanted components of the opposite orthogonally polarized signal. We demonstrate the generation of two independent 28 GHz 12 Gbaud quadrature-phase-shift-keying (QPSK) and 6 Gbaud 16-ary quadrature amplitude modulation (16-QAM) signals. 65 km single-mode fiber (SMF) transmission is achieved with the bit-error-rate (BER) below 20% forward-error-correction (FEC) soft-decision threshold of 2.4 ×10
⁻²
without dispersion compensation. We also demonstrate the generation of two independent 28GHz 1 Gbaud 64-QAM signals and transmission SMF over 10-km with the BER below 20% FEC soft-decision threshold of 2.4 ×10
⁻²
. Since the LSB and USB signals are on opposite polarization sides, the inter-band crosstalk and the inter-polarization SSBI can be significantly reduced. Because SSB modulation scheme is deployed, our proposed QAM vector signal generation system is robust to fiber dispersion.