A novel RF front-end, which could simultaneously realize wideband RF signal self-interference cancellation (SIC), local oscillator (LO) generator based on optoelectronic oscillator (OEO) and frequency down-conversion has been proposed and experimentally demonstrated. In our microwave photonic RF front-end, only one single-polarization optical in-phase and quadrature-phase (IQ) modulator are required. The upper Mach-Zehnder modulator (MZM) of this optical IQ modulator works as a mixer; the lower MZM works as a reference arm; the parent Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) is used to combine two output optical signals of these two child MZMs. In this way, not only self-interference signal is cancelled in optical domain but also frequency down-conversion is realized at the same time. On the other hand, the upper MZM is also shared to form an OEO by using a self-polarization-stabilization technique. By this means, no external LO signal for frequency down-conversion and electrical attenuator for SIC are needed in our scheme, contributing to compact structure and cost reduction. In our proof-of-concept experiment, a LO signal with central frequency of 10 GHz and phase noise of -108.66 dBc/Hz@10kHz is generated. By optimizing the bias points of the used optical IQ modulator, a 5×20MHz 64-ary quadrature amplitude modulation-orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (64QAM-OFDM) LTE-A signal with central frequency of 12.6 GHz is down-converted to 2.6 GHz, and about 28 dB cancellation ratio is achieved. The proposed scheme is suitable for wideband, integrated co-frequency co-time full duplex 5G communication.

Microwave photonic RF front-end for co-frequency co-time full duplex 5G communication with integrated RF signal self-interference cancellation, optoelectronic oscillator and frequency down-conversion