An all-optical frequency up-converter utilizing four-wave mixing in a semiconductor optical amplifier for sub-carrier multiplexed radio-over-fiber applications.

A novel all-optical frequency up-converter utilizing four-wave mixing (FWM) in a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) was proposed and experimentally demonstrated. The frequency up-converter converted an optical intermediate frequency (IF) signal (f(IF) = 2.5 GHz) to an optical radio frequency (RF) signal (f(RF) = 35 and 40 GHz) through mixing with an optical local oscillator (LO) signal (f(LO) = 37.5 GHz). The up-converter showed positive conversion efficiency of 5.77 dB for the optical IF power of -22 dBm and the optical LO power of -13 dBm. This scheme showed broad bandwidths with respect to both LO and IF frequencies. The up-converter showed a phase noise of -84.5 dBc/Hz for the LO frequency of 37.5 GHz (f(LO)) and the offset frequency of 10 kHz after the frequency up-conversion.