A tunable and wideband microwave photonic phase shifter based on dual-polarization modulator

A microwave photonic phase shifter based on dual-polarization Mach-Zehnder modulator (DPol-MZM) is proposed and experimentally demonstrated in this paper. A polarization multiplexed double sideband (DSB) signal is produced by a DPol-MZM. An optical bandpass filter (OBPF) follows after the DPol-MZM to filter out the optical carrier and one sideband. The polarization multiplexed signal is converted into a linear polarization light by a polarizer (Pol), and then beat at a photodiode (PD) to obtain the phase shifted signal. Experiments are carried out, and a continuous phase shift from −180° to 180° over a wide microwave frequency range of 10–33 GHz can be achieved by changing the polarization state using a polarization controller (PC). We also studied the spurious free dynamic range (SFDR) in the experiments. The features of this proposed phase shifter are large operation bandwidth, full-range 360° phase shift, and simple structure.