Microwave photonic phase shifter with a full 360-deg tunable range based on polarization sensitive electro-optical phase modulator and polarization modulator

A microwave photonic phase shifter that can realize a full 360-deg phase shift is presented. In the scheme, an optical polarization modulator is used to generate a single-sideband optical microwave signal with two orthogonally polarized tones, then a polarization sensitive electro-optical phase modulator is used to introduce the relative phase shifts between the two orthogonally polarized tones to realize the desired phase shift for the microwave signal in the photocurrent, and the phase shift of the microwave signal increases linearly with the DC driving voltage while it keeps a constant amplitude. The simulation results show that continuous phase shift with tuning range from −180  deg to +180  deg is realized for the microwave with the frequency from 4 to 38 GHz and the amplitude variation of the phase-shifted microwave signal is <1  dB.