Optoelectronic components for microwave photonic applications

Next generation terrestrial and satellite wireless access networks may take advantage of photonic technologies to overcome limitations of traditional RF techniques. Future airborne antennas are planned to be distributed over the entire aircraft, as well, ground based antennas are remote from the processing unit. All this applications share the need for low loss transmission and distribution of microwave signals (ranging from about 100 MHz to few ten GHz) which can be either large or narrow bandwidth. The low loss, low weight and size and high bandwidth capability of optical fibers and related optoelectronic systems make them a good candidate for the transmission and processing of microwave signals. However these optical links have to present low noise figure, low phase noise, good stability, and high linearity. We present recent progress on high speed directly modulated lasers and high speed high power photodiodes developed for these applications.