Bias Scheme Comparison for a Folding Image-Rejecting Microwave Photonic Link

A previously reported image-rejecting link can be operated in a number of alternate bias states to fold and downconvert several GHz of spectrum to a single intermediate frequency (IF) band while still rejecting image signals from opposite-sense sidebands. We expand the previous findings in this article, analytically and experimentally investigate some of these bias states, and explore their relative merits for different scenarios. While the bias state used in previous work results in the highest overall conversion gain, other states can have slightly better noise performance for the case when the link may not be input noise limited.