Microwave vector signal transmission over an optical fiber based on IQ modulation and coherent detection

A novel approach to transmitting two vector signals using a single optical carrier based on IQ modulation and coherent detection is proposed and demonstrated. In the proposed system, two quadrature phase-shift keying (QPSK) signals are IQ modulated on an optical carrier with one polarization state using a dual-parallel Mach-Zehnder modulator (DP-MZM). The optical carrier with an orthogonal polarization state is not modulated but transmitted with the modulated optical wave. At the receiver, the two orthogonally polarized light waves are separated and sent to a coherent detector, where the two QPSK signals are separated and demodulated. An experiment is performed. The transmission of two QPSK signals at 2 GHz with a data rate of 1 Gbps is implemented over a 25 km single-mode fiber. The performance of the transmission in terms of error vector magnitude is evaluated.