Adaptive linearized microwave downconversion utilizing a single dual-electrode Mach-Zehnder modulator.

An adaptive postprocessing approach to improve the linearity of the down-converted analog photonic link has been proposed and experimentally demonstrated. With the inverse transformation for the detected signal, the third-order intermodulation distortion (IMD3) can be significantly suppressed when only the frequency and bandwidth of the signal are known. Experimental results show that the spurious-free dynamic range (SFDR) of the link can reach ∼126  dB·Hz(4/5) after the proposed compensation scheme.