A photonics‐based wideband linearised mixer

A new wideband linearised photonic mixer structure based on a parallel topology of two electrooptic modulators is presented. This mixer realises a high spurious free-dynamic range (SFDR), with additional advantages of requiring only a small amount of optical power and operating over a multioctave range. Experimental results for the linearised photonic mixer demonstrate a measured receiver-noise limited SFDR of 115 dB · Hz4/5 with a low input optical-power requirement of only 5 mW. This offers multi-octave high dynamic range optical frequency conversion with wideband operation. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 39: 500–502, 2003