0.36 THz photonic terahertz-wave generation by simple optical frequency comb

Abstract A novel 0.36 THz photonic-assisted terahertz-wave (THz-wave) signal generation scheme is demonstrated via simulation. We employ only one single phase modulator (PM) as optical frequency comb generator to get the desired optical carries with high-frequency stability. We get two target optical carriers of symmetrical orders (−6th, +6th) chosen from the generated optical frequency comb via wavelength selector switch (WSS). One optical carrier from one port is acted as optical local oscillator (LO) for heterodyne beating. And one optical carrier from the other port is sent into the Mach Zendell modulator (MZM), which is modulated with a 2-Gband 16 quadrature amplitude modulation (16QAM) baseband signal or 4-Gbaud quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK) baseband signal generated in the MATLAB. Employing our proposed 0.36 THz photonic-assisted THz-wave signal generation scheme, we demonstrate the performance of 4-Gband vector QPSK signal or 2-Gbaud vector 16 QAM signal at back to back (BTB) transmission case or 10 km single-mode fiber transmission case. The bit error ratio (BER) under aforementioned conditions in every case is under the hard decision forward error correction (HD-FEC) threshold of 3.8e−3. To our knowledge, it’s the first time to utilize only one PM as optical frequency comb generator in the photonic-assisted THz-wave signal generation.