RF-photonic approaches have been evaluated for distributing electrically generated local oscillator (LO) signals as well as for performing frequency conversion with optically generated LO signals. For high-fidelity distribution of electrically generated signals, a switched RF photonic link was measured to have a residual phase noise of -145 dBc/Hz at an offset of 10 kHz from the X-band carrier. The switch isolation was better than 80 dB. For efficient frequency conversion with the RF-photonic approach, a relative conversion loss of 6.2 dB was measured for an LO modulation index of 0.97.

A scalable switched photonic link has been used to select RF local-oscillator (LO) signals. The LO signals transmitted by these externally modulated photonic links have phase noise as low as - 145 dBc/Hz at an offset of 10 kHz from an X-band signal, The optoelectronic switch selects among different LO inputs with an isolation of better than 80 dB. This performance is suitable for many radar and communications applications.

A Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) sponsored consortium combines expertise in military and commercial systems (Hughes, Boeing, GTEL), optoelectronic (OE) manufacturing (Ortel, UTP, Atx Telecom), and DoD applications (MIT Lincoln Lab, NCCOSC RDT&E Division) and leverages collective investments through technology transfer among the partners to develop user friendly and affordable analog OE modules. The availability of such modules will accelerate the pace of optoelectronic module insertion into analog systems and realize the vast market potential and national defense payoffs. Low cost transmitter and receiver modules, transmitter and receiver arrays, OEICs, enhanced and linearized electro-optic modulators, diode pumped solid-state lasers and 16x16 photonic switch arrays have been developed and tested.