| This thesis presents research into a new type of resonantly enhanced electro-optic modulator. It is intended for use in Radio-on-Fiber systems, but the results may be applied to other systems. The proposed modulator uses electrical resonant enhancement to enhance the performance of standard optical Mach-Zehnder modulators. It differs from traditional designs in that it uses a ring resonator and a directional coupler to ensure pure co-propagation of electrical and optical wave.;A theoretical model is developed that predicts the performance of the proposed modulator. The model allows for the variation of cavity length, coupling value, and cavity loss. Cavity loss can be arbitrarily set allowing for the modelling of actively-compensated enhanced resonators.;A series of experiments are carried out involving both passive and active resonantly-enhanced designs. The experimental results show a strong correlation to the theoretical models. The proposed resonantly enhanced design is shown to have an additional 3 dB of link gain improvement compared to a similar resonantly-enhanced device.;Future avenues of research are presented that include several methods of improving the bandwidth of the modulator, as well as an extension of the techniques used on the proposed modulator to traditional designs. |
