Simulation of Third-Order Intermodulation Distortion Suppression Incorporating Dual-Parallel Mach–Zehnder Modulator in a CR-SSB Modulation

A novel scheme is proposed to enlarge the spurious free dynamic range (SFDR) of microwave photonic (MWP) link by using dual-parallel Mach–Zehnder modulator, which modifies the single sideband signal and replaces the optical carrier with an unmodulated one to remove the optical main sources of third-order intermodulation distortion (IMD3). Simulation results show that the IMD3 and fifth-order intermodulation distortion can be suppressed greatly even when the modulation depth increases to a high value, and the link is limited by seventh-order intermodulation distortion and the SFDR is improved by 34.2 dB Hz in a 1-Hz bandwidth. The error vector magnitude of the MWP link with the proposed scheme is improved significantly for the transmitted 1-Gbit/s 16- quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) signal.