Switched photonic link for distribution of local-oscillator signals

A scalable switched photonic link has been used to select RF local-oscillator (LO) signals. The LO signals transmitted by these externally modulated photonic links have phase noise as low as -145 dBc/Hz at an offset of 10 kHz from an X-band signal. The optoelectronic switch selects among different LO inputs with an isolation of better than 80 dB. This performance is suitable for many radar and communications applications.