System characteristics of direct modulated and externally modulated RF fiber-optic links

RF fiber-optic links have numerous applications to microwave systems. To fully exploit their usefulness, and RF system designer must understand their properties in terms of the performance parameters that are used to describe the terminal properties of other RF components such as loss, signal-to-noise, linearity, and dynamics. This review paper details the performance of direct and external modulation fiber-optic links in terms of those parameters. Specific examples of a 4.1-4.7 GHz direct modulation link and a 2.0-12.0 GHz external modulation link are used.