Analog photonic link based on the Aulter–Townes splitting induced dual-band filter for OCS and the SOI signal processor

Analog photonic link (APL) is attractive for its potential high performance of larger dynamic range, tunability, and immunity to electromagnetic interference (EMI). An APL based on the Aulter−Townes splitting (ATS)-effect-induced dual-band filter for optical carrier suppression (OCS) and the SOI signal processor has been proposed and experimentally demonstrated. The bandwidths of the two passbands are approximately 780 MHz, and the interval could be tuned from 8 GHz to more than 80 GHz in simulation. The extinction ratio is larger than 20 dB, which can provide a 20-dB suppression of the optical carrier and higher order sidebands to obtain clean optical carrier and local oscillator (LO) for modulation and down-conversion. The down-conversion APL based on the proposed dual-band OCS filter at X-band has been presented, and the spurious free dynamic range (SFDR) of the link is measured to be as high as 102.2  dB-Hz2/3.