Patent ID: 8879916

Claim:
A method of carrier-suppressed amplitude modulation of a radio-frequency input signal, said method comprising: (a) receiving a radio-frequency input signal; (b) providing a radio-frequency locking signal having a locking frequency; (c) providing a single-frequency optical carrier signal; (d) splitting said optical carrier signal to a signal arm and a local-oscillator arm, wherein said optical carrier signal is suppressed via optical modulator bias in said signal arm to form a suppressed carrier; (e) impressing said radio-frequency input signal and said radio-frequency locking signal onto the optical field of said suppressed carrier using an electro-optic modulator, thereby generating an optical spectrum in said signal arm; (f) introducing said optical spectrum to a photonic integrated circuit comprising a microresonator filter and a finite impulse response filter, wherein said optical spectrum is split to pass (1) a first optical signal through a first waveguide branch coupled to said microresonator filter and (2) a second optical signal through a second waveguide branch coupled to said finite impulse response filter; (g) filtering out one sideband of said first optical signal with said microresonator filter, to generate a filtered first optical signal; (h) selectively passing a double sideband, associated with said locking frequency, of said second optical signal through said finite impulse response filter, to generate a filtered second optical signal; (i) introducing said filtered first optical signal and said filtered second optical signal to a double-balanced receiver; and (j) recovering a radio-frequency output signal from said double-balanced receiver, wherein a feedback loop from said radio-frequency output signal back to said local-oscillator arm is configured to provide dithering to at least partially stabilize the differential phase between said signal arm and said local-oscillator arm.