Lithium Niobate Optical Modulator for Microwave Filtering Applications

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase II project develops novel materials processing and device design that extract the maximum possible performance out of the lithium niobate electro-optic material. The novel modulator device incorporates reconfigurable quasi-phase matching (RQPM) to produce an arbitrary RF bandpass response. The Phase I effort has laid a firm foundation for the creation of a novel, compact, efficient programmable modulator device with tunable RF filtering capability for frequency tunable RF photonic applications. We expect that the combination of crystal thin film technology, innovative device design, and novel domain engineering techniques will develop optical modulator prototypes with electrically programmable RF band pass filter response that will significantly enhance the performance of photonic links operating at microwave frequencies. SRICO proposes significant efficiency improvements to lithium niobate electro-optic modulators that are crucial to achieve practical applications of fiber optic links for microwave transmission and signal processing functions. We propose an architecture and novel optical modulator design for the realization of high gain fiber optic that concurrently provides programmable photonic RF filtering over the 2 to 20 GHz regime. Multiple optical modulators simultaneously fed by a single RF input are proposed to create advanced RF filtering functions.