title: High-performance monolithically integrated 120° downconverter with relaxed hardware constraints.
abstract: A coherent receiver based on a 120° downconverter architecture, inherited from previous approaches at the microwave and optical fields, is proposed, analyzed, numerically evaluated and compared to the conventional 90° downconverter alternative. It is shown that, due to its superior calibration procedure, the new downconverter architecture allows full compensation of the imbalances in its optical front-end thus leading to an extended dynamic range and a broader operating bandwidth than its 90° counterpart. Simulation results from monolithically integrated downconverters show that our approach can be an interesting alternative to support efficient modulation schemes such as M-QAM that is being studied as potential candidate for the next generation of optical communication systems.
authors.affiliation: Departamento Ingeniería de Comunicaciones, ETSI Telecomunicación, Universidad de Málaga, 29071 Málaga, Spain. reyes@ic.uma.es
authors.forename: P J
authors.initials: PJ
authors.lastname: Reyes-Iglesias
authors.forename: I
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Molina-Fernández
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Moscoso-Mártir
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Ortega-Moñux
mesh_terms: D017076:Computer-Aided Design; D004867:Equipment Design; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis; D008872:Microwaves; D055096:Optical Devices; D013685:Telecommunications / Q000295:instrumentation*; D014159:Transducers