Analysis of optical-microwave mixing process in electro-optical modulators

The principle of operation and the general parameters of the electro-optical Mach-Zehnder modulators are reminded in the paper. With the use of the mathematical relationships describing the transmission of the optical signal through the modulator, the theoretical model of the optical signal transmission with two modulating signals at two frequencies will be presented. The theoretical relationships describing the efficiency of the optical-microwave mixing and frequency multiplying in the two-tone operation will be derived. The analysis and the simulations will be performed for different operating points, where the nonlinearity of the transmission characteristic is specially strong.