Proposal of dual-heterodyne-mixing method and application to high-speed waveform measurement using low-speed equipments

A novel method to measure a relative phase between frequency-different optical wavelengths has been proposed and named as Dual-heterodyne-mixing method. The operation principle of the method is represented, where the relative phase is simply described as dc voltage. The operation principle was experimentally confirmed with 0- and π-phase-different optical pairs generated by an intensity modulator. Also, it has been applied for a high-speed signal sensing with a high-resolution amplitude spectrum measurement method. A 12.5 Gbps signal sensing with 1/63 relatively low-speed photodetector (200 MHz) was demonstrated.