Photonic mixer incorporating all-optical microwave frequency generator based on stimulated brillouin scattering using single laser source

�� 2020 The Authors. Published by IEEE. This is an open access article available under a Creative Commons licence. The published version can be accessed at the following link on the publisher���s website: https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2020.2975667In this paper, we report the theoretical and experimental implementation of a photonic mixer for Radio-Over-Fiber (RoF) transmission systems, which incorporates an all-optical 10.87 GHz microwave frequency signal generator based on beating laser frequency with its first order Stimulated Brillouin Scattering (SBS) frequency shift. A 13GHz Radio Frequency (RF) is down-converted to 2.13 GHz Intermediate Frequency (IF) signal. The proposed system configuration represents a cost-effective photonic mixer that can be deployed for up and down conversion around 11 GHz in RoF transmission systems. The optically generated microwave signal of 10.87 GHz has a phase noise of -109 dBc/Hz at 15-MHz offset. The proposed photonic mixer exhibits a Spurious-Free Dynamic Range (SFDR) of 93dB.Hz 2/3. This RoF transmission system configuration deploys dual parallel Gallium Arsenide (GaAs) Mach Zehnder Modulator as a photonic mixer, and a single laser source as a Brillouin pump and as an optical carrier at the same time. To the best of our knowledge, this type of photonic mixers has not been reported in the literature.This work was supported in part by the Leonardo���Electronics, Defense and Security Systems, Grant RF Broadband Project, under Grant RES-15287.Published versio