Conversion for the Better: A Broadband Highly Efficient Microwave Photonics Detector

Optical fibers have many advant ages over traditional electrical cables and interconnects when it comes to transmitting high-frequency signals. These advantages include lower loss, higher bandwidth, immunity to electromagnetic interference, and lower power consumption. It is due to these advantages that fiber optic links have found widespread use in applications such as radio-over-fiber and antenna remoting, where coaxial cable loss increases prohibitively versus frequency. An RF photonic link comprises a transmitter and a receiver. In the transmit stage, the optical carrier is modulated by the RF signal; in the receive stage, the optically modulated signal is demodulated using a photodetector. Despite the numerous advantages, poor efficiency of the electrical-to-optical conversion process constrains the overall link gain.