A reconfigurable photonic microwave mixer

A reconfigurable photonic microwave mixer for frequency downconversion based on an optical hybrid is proposed and demonstrated. By simply changing the photodetection method, such as the direct detection, balanced detection, or double detection, a single-ended photonic microwave mixer, balanced mixer, I/Q mixer or image-reject mixer (IRM) can be realized. In a proof-of-concept experiment, an 18-GHz RF signal is successfully downconverted to be a 2.07GHz intermediate frequency (IF) signal based on the proposed reconfigurable photonic microwave mixer.