There is a natural trade-off between spacecraft size and functionality in all current satellite applications, independently of orbit and mission. Therefore, advances in both miniaturization and integration technologies are required to increase satellites’ lifetime and performance, simultaneously reducing their cost. In case of the next generation of Earth Observation satellites, one of the key development areas is synthetic aperture radar (SAR) antennas, where expected progress will be to increase the operating bandwidth - requiring, for instance wideband true-time delay (TTD) beamformers - and miniaturization, drastically reducing the mass and volume compared to current implementations. In this scenario, the use of photonic integrated circuits (PIC) technology in the beamforming network, in combination with an optical fibre harness, are obvious key enabling technologies for future SAR instruments. Optically implemented TTD beamforming structures achieve orders-of-magnitude improvements in size and mass compared with coaxial cable and RF switch based alternatives. Photonic technology also brings easy routing thanks to wavelength-division multiplexing, antenna and RF system integration due to the EMI -free characteristic of the optical fibre and a reduction of the risks associated with the in-orbit antenna deployment. Additionally, the inherent broadband characteristic of photonic technology, related to the transport and processing of RF signals, simplifies the beamforming network and signal distribution design for different frequencies, applications and missions. In the H2020 RETINA project (H2020-SPACE-2018-821943) a consortium formed by DAS Photonics, Airbus Italia, AMO GmbH, STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and Universitat Politècnica de València is developing a miniaturised photonic front-end for next-generation X-band space SAR applications. In this article we present advances in design and fabrication of PIC for TTD, the design and predicted performance of multi element, dual polarisation antenna building blocks and photoreceivers for phase and amplitude controlled optical to RF conversion.
Vanessa Duarte, João Prata, Rogério Nogueira, Georg Winzer, Lars Zimmermann, Rob Walker, Stephen Clements, Marta Filipowicz, Marek Napierala, Tomasz Nasilowski, Jonathan Crabb, Leontios Stampoulidis, Javad Anzalchi, Miguel Drummond
KEYWORDS: Signal to noise ratio, Phase shifts, Photonics, Signal processing, Photonic integrated circuits, Interference (communication), Signal attenuation, Satellite communications, Satellites, Signal detection
In this paper we present a 4-channel silicon photonic true-time delay (TTD) beamformer in which the phase of each channel is automatically adjusted in real-time. Beamforming was demonstrated with a 1 Gb/s QPSK signal carried at 28 GHz. The demonstration comprised the following custom made devices: two arrays of GaAs Mach-Zehnder modulators (MZMs), a radiation-hardened 7-core erbium-doped fiber amplifier (MC-EDFA) for power boosting, and a silicon photonic integrated circuit (PIC) containing a 4 × 1 TTD optical beamformer network (OBFN). Having provided a successful proof-of-concept demonstration, the dimensioning of an end-to-end photonic-aided payload receiver is here studied. It comprises the proposed OBFN fed by 100 antenna elements (AEs) in a multibeam scenario, also providing an estimation of the system’s power consumption.
The generation of satellite communications with flexible and efficient transmission of radio signals requires a large number of low interfering beams and a maximum exploitation of the available frequency spectrum.
In this paper we propose and demonstrate by simulation an all-optical modulation format conversion from non-return-tozero on-off keying (NRZ-OOK) at 10 Gb/s to dual-polarization quadrature-phase-shift keying(DP-QPSK) at 20 Gb/s for each channel, by cross phase modulation (XPM) in a polarization-maintaining highly nonlinear fiber (PM-HNLF). The obtained results show a constellation diagram with an error vector magnitude (EVM), 17.26% and 18.79%, for each channel. The input powers of the two NRZ-OOK channels were 16.9dBm and 13.9dBm for a 3km fiber length. We also studied the impact of the nonlinear fiber length in the conversion of the signal and analyzed the system performance based on error vector magnitude (EVM) for different fiber lengths.
Advanced modulation formats are an emerging area since they allow reducing the symbol rate while encoding more bits per symbol. This allows higher spectral efficiencies. In addition, we can achieve higher data rates using lower-speed equipment like in all-optical format conversion systems, an important step for the development of systems with high transmission rates. In this paper we study the impact of some impairments found in all-optical advanced format conversions based on cross phase modulation (XPM) on a highly nonlinear fiber (HNLF), such as amplified spontaneous emission (ASE), nonlinear fiber length and group velocity dispersion (GVD), and analyze its performance based on error vector magnitude (EVM) for different bitrate transmissions. This simulation study is applied on earlier proposed phase modulated format conversion where n nonreturn-to-zero on-off keying (NRZ-OOK) channels at 10 Gb/s are converted into a return-to-zero m phase shift keying (RZ-mPSK) at 20Gb/s. We extend the work with simulations and show the results for n NRZ-OOK channels at 20Gb/s, 40 Gb/s and 50Gb/s to RZ-PSK at 40Gb/s, 80 Gb/s and 100Gb/s, respectively.
Access to the requested content is limited to institutions that have purchased or subscribe to SPIE eBooks.
You are receiving this notice because your organization may not have SPIE eBooks access.*
*Shibboleth/Open Athens users─please
sign in
to access your institution's subscriptions.
To obtain this item, you may purchase the complete book in print or electronic format on
SPIE.org.
INSTITUTIONAL Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.
PERSONAL Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.