RF Photonics Challenges on Aerospace Platforms

There are enormous benefits and serious challenges in the deployment of RF photonics on aerospace platforms. Single mode wave division multiplexing (WDM) is considered in this paper in meeting the need for a low loss, light weight, and high bandwidth RF signal distribution system. Other papers presented at the 2002 21st IEEE Digital Avionics Systems Conference [1] and the 2004 SAE World Aviation Conference [2] expand on this topic.