Reconfigurable UWB Pulse Generation Based on a Dual-Drive Mach-Zehnder Modulator

Abstract

We propose and experimentally demonstrate a reconfigurable ultrawideband (UWB) pulse generation scheme by using a dual-drive Mach-Zehnder modulator (DDMZM). In the proposed method, two phase modulators of the DDMZM are respectively driven by properly designed electrical signals. By carefully setting the parameters of the two electrical signals and the bias voltage of the DDMZM, different UWB pulses can be achieved at the interference output of the DDMZM. A proof-of-concept experiment verifies the feasibility of the proposed method. Photonic generations of UWB monocycle, doublet, triplet, and quintuple pulses have been successfully demonstrated, with central frequencies of 4.69, 4.69, 5.47, and 6.25 GHz and fractional bandwidths of 150%, 133%, 186%, and 75%, respectively.