USA As Represented by Secretary of the Navy

Christopher E Sunderman

Keith J Williams

Preetpaul S Devgan

Vincent J Urick

John F Diehl

A method and system for processing analog optical signals to produce a single RF output free from even-order harmonic distortion. Two analog optical signals of different wavelengths &#x3bb;are input into a dual-output Mach-Zehnder modulator (MZM), where one wavelength input is high-biased and one wavelength is low-biased. The complementary high- and low-biased wavelengths are output from each arm of the MZM to a multiplexer, which filters out the unwanted high- or low-biased wavelengths from each MZM arm so that both wavelengths are low-biased or high-biased. The signals are passed to a pair of photodiodes, and the photocurrents from the photodiodes are differenced to produce the final RF output. Because of the complementary phase differences between the two low- or high-biased signals generating the photocurrent, all components of the photocurrent except the fundamental and odd-order harmonics cancel each other, resulting in a high-quality RF output free from harmonic distortion.

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Rockville, MD, United States of America

Christopher E Sunderman