The invention discloses a
microwave photonic down-conversion apparatus and method based on a bidirectional
cyclic frequency shift, and relates to the field of
microwave photonics. The
microwave photonic down-conversion apparatus and method aim to solve the defects of small bandwidth, large loss and the like confronted by a traditional
electrical frequency converter and the defect that high-frequency electrical local oscillation is needed by an optical
frequency conversion technology. The apparatus provided by the invention consists of a
laser, a
cyclic frequency shift module and a photoelectric
detector; and the
cyclic frequency shift module includes a 2*2
optical coupler, a
polarization controller, a dual-drive electro-
optical intensity modulator, an electrical local oscillation source, an
optical amplifier, an optical
band pass filter and an optical adjustable
delay line. In the cyclic
frequency shift module, first-order optical sidebands of a to-be-converted radio-frequency
signal and an electrical local oscillation
signal on an optical carrier simultaneously perform opposite optical
sideband movement step by step at a same
frequency shift, and at last photoelectric detection isperformed on two opposite
frequency shift optical sidebands having nearest frequencies to implement down-conversion of the radio-frequency
signal; and with the characteristic of opposite frequency shift of the cyclic frequency shift module, by changing a frequency of the electrical local oscillation source, the wide frequency range under low-frequency electrical local oscillation and the down-conversion of a tunable microwave signal are implemented.