Photonic receiving and linearization of RF signals with improved spurious free dynamic range

Abstract A linearization scheme for receiving broadband radio frequency (RF) is theoretically analyzed and experimentally demonstrated. The system uses three intensity modulators (IMs) to impose a two-tone RF signal on an optical carrier. We demonstrate that the linearization technique can be used to suppress the third-order inter-modulation distortion (IMD3) and the five-order inter-modulation distortion (IMD5) components simultaneously. An improvement of the spurious free dynamic range (SFDR) as large as 112.13 dB in 1-Hz bandwidth is achieved, which is 13.5 dB higher than the SFDR of a conventional intensity-modulated scheme.