Effect of noise in optically-fed phased array antennas for CDMA wireless networks

The characteristics of an optically-fed phased array antenna are affected by the amplitude and phase noise introduced by optical amplifiers (EDFA) used in the system. A theoretical derivation and a numerical computation of the effect of phase noise on antenna performance are given. The phase fluctuations make the main beam jitter around a mean value directly related to the mean and the variance of the amplified spontaneous emission induced random phase change.