Mitigation of Photodiode Induced Even-Order Distortion in Photonic Links With Predistortion Modulation

A new class of predistortion techniques for suppressing photodiode generated even-order distortion is presented. Modulation induced distortions can be generated to cancel the photodiode even-order contributions. This method is described conceptually, theoretically, and experimentally in a generalized fashion to include intensity-, phase-, and polarization-modulation implementations. Measured suppression of photodiode second-order distortion upwards of 34 dB is demonstrated with frequencies ranging from 1 to 35 GHz.