GaAs-based polarization modulators for microwave photonic applications

Abstract

GaAs-based polarization modulators (PolMs) exhibit the unique characteristic of simultaneous intensity and complementary phase modulation owing to the linear electro-optic (LEO) effect determined by crystallographic orientations of the device. In this paper, we reviewed the principle of operation, the design and fabrication flows of a GaAs-based PolM. Analytical models are established, from which the features of a PolM are derived and discussed in detail. The recent advances in PolM-based multifunctional systems, in particular the PolM-based optoelectronic oscillator (OEO) are demonstrated with an emphasis on the remarkable development of applications for frequency conversion, tunable microwave photonic filter (MPF), optical frequency comb (OFC), arbitrary waveform generation (AWG) and beamforming. Challenges in practical implementation of the PolM-based systems and their promising future are discussed as well.

Keywords

GaAs / polarization modulator (PolM) / optoelectronic oscillator (OEO) / frequency conversion / microwave photonics filter (MPF)

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported in part by the National Basic Research Program of China (No. 2012CB315705), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 61422108 and 61527820), Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Nos. NP2015404, NE2012002); and a Project Funded by the Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions.

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