TY - JOUR
T1 - RF Characterization of an Integrated Microwave Photonic Circuit for Self-Interference Cancellation
AU - Chang, Matthew P.
AU - Blow, Eric C.
AU - Lu, Monica Z.
AU - Sun, Jingyi Jenny
AU - Prucnal, Paul R.
N1 - Funding Information:
Dr. Chang was a Gordon Wu Fellow. He is a member of the IEEE Photonics Society and the Optical Society of America. He was a recipient of the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship and the Excellence in Teaching Award.
Funding Information:
Manuscript received March 18, 2017; revised June 11, 2017; accepted June 20, 2017. Date of publication August 3, 2017; date of current version January 4, 2018. This work was supported by L-3 Telemetry East and Princeton University under Grant 5.13.15 (Corresponding author: Matthew P. Chang.) M. P. Chang, E. C. Blow, and P. R. Prucnal are with the Lightwave Communications Research Laboratory, Department of Electrical Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08540 USA (e-mail: mpchang@princeton.edu; ecb10@princeton.edu; prucnal@princeton.edu).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 IEEE.
PY - 2018/1
Y1 - 2018/1
N2 - We perform a full radio frequency (RF) characterization of the first integrated microwave photonic interference canceller. The photonic integrated circuit is one of the first to possess only RF inputs and outputs, with monolithically integrated optical sources and detectors. The characterization is important to developing an in-depth understanding of the integrated circuit's effect on RF receivers. We characterize the circuit's gain, noise figure, input intercept point, 1-dB compression point, and spurious-free dynamic range as functions of on-chip device bias points and frequency up to 6 GHz. We find that the circuit's RF properties are almost exclusively determined by the directly modulated laser. Link gain is primarily driven by the laser slope efficiency. The noise figure is dominated by signal attenuation and laser relative intensity noise. The circuit nonlinearity is the third-order intermodulation product limited. With the exception of link gain, all properties improved with increasing laser bias, saturating at 30 mA. Meanwhile, all properties degraded with increasing frequency. External optical feedback from the reflections OFF of waveguide transitions in the monolithic circuit created operating points of high noise figure and low gain, and should be avoided during operation. The circuit can be improved by implementing a balanced link architecture to suppress the laser relative intensity noise and using external modulators to improve the link linearity and bandwidth.
AB - We perform a full radio frequency (RF) characterization of the first integrated microwave photonic interference canceller. The photonic integrated circuit is one of the first to possess only RF inputs and outputs, with monolithically integrated optical sources and detectors. The characterization is important to developing an in-depth understanding of the integrated circuit's effect on RF receivers. We characterize the circuit's gain, noise figure, input intercept point, 1-dB compression point, and spurious-free dynamic range as functions of on-chip device bias points and frequency up to 6 GHz. We find that the circuit's RF properties are almost exclusively determined by the directly modulated laser. Link gain is primarily driven by the laser slope efficiency. The noise figure is dominated by signal attenuation and laser relative intensity noise. The circuit nonlinearity is the third-order intermodulation product limited. With the exception of link gain, all properties improved with increasing laser bias, saturating at 30 mA. Meanwhile, all properties degraded with increasing frequency. External optical feedback from the reflections OFF of waveguide transitions in the monolithic circuit created operating points of high noise figure and low gain, and should be avoided during operation. The circuit can be improved by implementing a balanced link architecture to suppress the laser relative intensity noise and using external modulators to improve the link linearity and bandwidth.
KW - Device characterization
KW - interference between wireless systems
KW - microwave photonics
KW - optical integrated circuit
KW - radio frequency (RF) microwave photonic devices
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U2 - 10.1109/TMTT.2017.2726531
DO - 10.1109/TMTT.2017.2726531
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85029003787
SN - 0018-9480
VL - 66
SP - 596
EP - 605
JO - IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques
JF - IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques
IS - 1
M1 - 8000692
ER -