Filterless frequency-octupling mm-wave generation by cascading Sagnac loop and DPMZM

In this paper, a filterless photonic frequency-octupling scheme is presented. It is implemented by cascading a Sagnac loop with an intensity modulator (IM) in it and a dual-parallel Mach-Zehnder modulator (DPMZM) in series. The Sagnac loop is used to get the ±2nd-order sidebands of LO signal. The following DPMZM is utilized to obtain the ±4th-order sidebands. By photo-detecting the ±4th-order sidebands, mm-wave signal with the eightfold frequency of LO signal can be obtained. The scheme is verified by experiments, and a 32-GHz mm-wave signal is produced with the assistance of a 4-GHz LO signal. A 20-dB optical sideband suppression ratio (OSSR) and a 17-dB electrical spurious suppression ratio (ESSR) are realized, and no extra deterioration of phase noise is observed. Besides, the verification of the frequency tunability is implemented in the experiment.