Optoelectronic Mixer With Photoconductive Switch For 1550 Nm Wavelengths

We demonstrate an optoelectronic mixer based on an ultrafast InGaAs photoconductive switch and its use in an innovative heterodyne detection system for Radio over Fibre transmission. The advantage of the proposed switch is its relatively flat response curve in a wide frequency range up to 67 GHz. Two mixing schemes are presented through I-Q modulated data-stream down-conversion. The data can modulate either the electrical signal or the optical signal. In case the electrical signal is modulated, a mode-locked semiconductor laser diode is used as an optical local oscillator at the self oscillating frequency of 24.5 GHz. The InP based quantum-dash mode-locked laser emitting in the 1570 nm wavelength range is stabilized by a feedback loop and shows a low phase noise in order to increase the mixing performances of the detection apparatus. In a second experiment, the photoconductive switch is combined with a continuous wave laser to demonstrate the feasibility of down converting an optically provided data stream with an electrical local oscillator.