Development and antenna range demonstration of an eight-element optically powered directly modulated receive UHF fiberoptic manifold

We describe the development and antenna range demonstration of an eight-element optically powered directly modulated UHF fiberoptic manifold. Low-power consumption active laser diode drivers are used to set the link noise figure to below 3 dB without major sacrifice in link dynamic range, power is provided via light, propagating in a multimode fiber, and is converted to DC via photovoltaic converters. The manifold has a 75 MHz 3 dB bandwidth (350-425 MHz), it consumes 216 mW per channel (54 mA@4 V), has a two-tone dynamic range of 69 dB-MHz/sup 2/3/ and a noise figure of 2.4 dB.