Radio Frequency Generator Using Four Wave Mixing in Cascaded Nonlinear Semiconductor Optical Amplifiers

M.I. Memona, M. Sirajb, H. Fathallahb and M.S. Khanb aCOMSATS Institute of Information Technology, Islamabad Pakistan bCollege of Engineering, King Saud University, Saudi Arabia

Full Text PDF

For the last three decades, the phenomenon of four-wave mixing is a significant technique for generation of light at new distinct wavelength. When two distinct laser beams (pump and probe) beat together in a non-linear medium, few modes are increased in the power at same distance from the probe and pump, as a result of four-wave mixing. In this paper, cascading structure of two semiconductor optical amplifiers produces very strong four-wave mixing. This technique is exploited to devise a tunable radio frequency signal generator. The wavelength distance between pump and probe laser beams determines the radio frequency of the generated signal. Using this scheme, it can be observed from the experimental results, that there is an increase of more than 3 dB in signal to noise ratio at 7 Gbits/sec data rate of the 60 GHz generated mm-wave signal. Moreover, the radio frequency can be tuned to hundreds of GHz by varying the distance between the pump and probe signals. This scheme will readily serve as future all optical radars. It is also a key technique for short-range communication systems for military applications. The above scheme can also be monolithically integrated.

DOI: 10.12693/APhysPolA.129.832 PACS numbers: 42.60.Da, 42.60.Fc, 42.65.Hw, 42.79.Nv