Photonic systems for antenna control

There are many techniques for optically carrying an RF signal from an antenna element to its receiver, thus, optically isolating the antenna. However, if the antenna needs to be tuned or the matching network needs to be controlled then it is desirous to perform that function optically as well. We show that an optically-linked electrically-small loop can be tuned over almost an octave of bandwidth by using remote optical control via an optically variable reactance. Both theoretical and experimental results are presented.