SWaP constrained photonics assisted RF receivers for Electronic Support Measures

Photonics-assisted RF receiver architectures have been proposed, studied and designed. The innovative solutions exploit photonic techniques to perform a wideband scanning of the RF input spectrum avoiding bulky multiple crystal oscillators and bandpass filters, enabling the solution to overcome the size, weight and power bottleneck that faces pure electronics-based counterparts. The developed demonstrator shows an operating of 0.5÷28.5 GHz, limited by laboratory constraints, and simulative analysis ensures exceeding the 0.5÷40 GHz goal by simply employing commercially available electro-optical devices accepting higher RF driving voltages. The architecture can exhibit an instantaneous bandwidth of several GHz, with linear dynamic range of 160 dB/Hz, spurious-free dynamic range of 109 dB/Hz2/3, second order input intercept point of 57 dBm, and a measured DC offset lower than 50 µV. Field-trial campaign results, from relevant Electronic Support Measures scenarios, have been presented, too. Stemming from the same photonic architecture, an innovative software-defined and filter-free RF transmitter has been also proposed and validated.