Optoelectronic Frequency Conversion Employing an Electro-Absorption Modulated Laser for a Cube Satellite Earth Station

Recently, even a small cube satellite carries a Ku-band transponder and, then, its reception system is required in an earth radio station. A local oscillator (LO) frequency is so high that control and management of the frequency and phase becomes a big issue. We propose optoelectronic frequency conversion using an electro-absorption modulated laser, where LO-on-fiber and IF-on-fiber is transmitted as uplink and downlink, respectively, in a single fiber. The electro-absorption modulator functions as a photodiode to the uplink LO-on-fiber signal as well as the light modulator to convert radio frequency subcarrier in this system.