Optical signal distribution for a satellite phased array

Describes an optical signal distribution and interface system. The system has been built to determine the feasibility of this approach for use on an advanced synthetic aperture radar (SAR) Earth resourcing satellite. The satellite will utilize an electronically steered phased array antenna with a large number of active remote transmit-receive (T/R) elements. Transmit signal distribution is at 5 GHz using a directly modulated laser. Optical signal splitting is used, with monomode and multimode fused fibre couplers. The optical receiver is a reactively matched PIN photodiode feeding an all MMIC receiver amplifier chain. Receive signal beam combining occurs at 300 MHz. The paper reviews the performance and design criteria of the current system and consider areas open to further refinement.