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| | | | The photonic receiver front end developed at OEwaves is designed to simplify the architecture of conventional microwave receiver front ends that address the need to substantially reduce its size and power requirements. The photonic receiver is based on the patented technology of ultra-high quality factor (Q) crystalline whispering gallery mode (WGM) optical resonators. Which was first demonstrated by employing a lithium niobate optical modulator as a receiver (see "Whispering-gallery-mode electro-optic modulator and photonic microwave receive", V.S. Ilchenko, A.A. Savchenkov, A.B. Matsko,and L. Maleki, JOSA B Vol.20, p.333-342; US Pats 6,473,218, 7,043,117). The scheme takes advantage of the inherent optical nonlinearity of lithium niobate that results in mixing optical carriers and sidebands within the crystal. These optical fields create beat frequencies at the output of a photodetector, which functions as a mixer in the optical domain and as a filter. OEwaves has demonstrated photonic front ends operating at X- and Ka-band based on the above principle. The projected sensitivity of these photonic front end receivers can exceed -100 dBm. The spurious-free dynamic range and a measure of the linearity of the system, can reach 70 dB in several MHz bandwidth. A major feature of OEwaves' photonic front end receivers is that they contain only miniature optical components and can be packaged in about one-centimeter cube volume. This makes it especially attractive for mm-wave applications where the size of the receiver is important. Traditional RF solutions are not available in such a small form-factor.
Another receiver architecture being developed at OEwaves based on tunable photonic filters is capable of receiving signals across 20 GHz of bandwidth with a small instantaneous bandwidth. This architecture results in a significant reduction of size, mass, power and cost, as compared to the conventional wideband microwave receivers. | |
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