Optical fibre is an excellent transmission medium – it has very low loss and very large bandwidth (especially when compared with microwave transmission media). In addition, it is possible to modulate light at several tens of GHz and then recover that modulation. Hence there has been much interest in the use of optical fibre for the transmission and processing of RF signals. Such links are analogue in nature, and issues of conversion efficiency, noise figure, nonlinearity and dynamic range are important in link design.
In the Seminar, Dr Iezekiel will show how compact optical filters based on silicon nitride technology can be used to improve the performance of analogue microwave fibre-optic links through techniques such as carrier suppression and sideband filtering. Design issues associated with ring-resonator structures will be discussed. Experimental results for radio-over-fibre links using fixed extinction ratio ringresonators and variable extinction ratio Mach-Zehnder based structures will be provided. Future applications, such as optoelectronic oscillators for environmental sensing, will also be considered briefly.
Dr Iezekiel is Head of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Cyprus. He received his BEng. and PhD. degrees in electronic and electrical engineering from the University of Leeds, UK. From 1991 to 1993, he worked in conjunction with M/A-COM on the development of high-speed photonic multichip modules. From 1993 to 2006, he was a Member of Academic Staff at the University of Leeds, where he led research activity in microwave photonics and developed a new degree program in photonics sponsored by Agilent Technologies. At Leeds, he was Deputy Director of the Institute of Microwaves and Photonics and also Director of Learning and Teaching.
All members of academic, technical and administrative staff are welcome to the seminar. RAs and postgraduates (PhD candidates and MSc students) are particularly encouraged to attend the event. For any further enquiries, please contact Dr Nathan Gomes (N.J.Gomes@kent.ac.uk).