Photonic RF Channelization Based on Electro-Optic Ring Modulator

A novel microwave photonic channelization scheme for a broadband radio frequency (RF) signal based on an electro-optic ring modulator is proposed and demonstrated. Due to the modulation and filtering functions of the ring resonator, the proposed microwave photonic channelizer can simplify the general traveling-wave modulator and optical filter into a single ring. In the proposed scheme, the input RF signal is multicast by an optical frequency comb (OFC), spectrally sliced by the ring resonator, and then channelized by an optical wavelength-division multiplexer (WDM). An 8-channel channelizer centered at 21~28 GHz with a 1 GHz step is achieved by numerical simulation and experiment.