Photonic generation of microwave triangular waveform based on polarization-dependent modulation efficiency of a single-drive Mach–Zehnder modulator

Abstract A new photonic approach for triangular waveform generation by making full use of the polarization sensitive characteristic of the single-drive Mach–Zehnder modulator (MZM) is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. In this method, the MZM is biased at minimum transmission point and its best modulation axis has an angle with the polarization direction of injection continuous wave (CW). Due to the polarization dependent modulation efficiency of a MZM, the odd-order modulation sidebands can be generated on the parallel polarization component but only the optical carrier is presented on the orthogonal direction. After a polarizer, the required Fourier components can be projected on the same polarization direction, which contribute a triangular pulse stream by photodetection. In the experimental demonstration, triangular waveforms with repetition frequencies of 8, 10, and 12 GHz are successfully generated, respectively.