Wideband modulators and transmitters for analog fiber optic links

The replacement of coaxial cable with single mode fiber on various airborne platforms has a number of advantages. The use of fiber optic cable, in addition to reducing the size, weight, and cross section of the point to point links, offers greater immunity to electromagnetic interference with less required shielding. Currently, shielded coaxial cable is being used in analog links for transmitting local oscillator signals, and to send various received antenna signals to banks of RF receiver's onboard aircraft. Although the physical length of these transmission lines are less than a few dozen meters, their stringent RF requirements require the use of unique photonic components that are not typically used in digital telecommunications fiber optic links. In this presentation, EOSPACE will show a new generation of modulators and their integration into small form factor transmitters for use in high dynamic range analog fiber optic links. Currently most RF links are operating at various frequency bands from 10kHz to approximately 20 GHz. In anticipation of future systems, EOSPACE is also working on extending the wideband operation of these modulators out to 110 GHz.