Photonics RF Front-End for High-Throughput Satellites

In this paper, we investigate several photonic RF receiver front-end architectures for satellite payloads, comparing the key characteristics and RF performance of intensitymodulated links and phase-modulated links with single and balanced photodetection. We focus on conversion gain and noise figure as primary metrics, demonstrating, for example, that gains on the order of -12 dB and noise figures of 23 dB can be achieved under typical operating conditions with received optical powers of 10 dBm. We validate our simulation model through experiments, showing strong agreement with measured results. Furthermore, we explore the influence of modulator <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$V_{\pi }$</tex-math></inline-formula> on overall system performance, identifying achievable performance levels and technology trade-offs. These findings offer insights into optimizing photonic RF front-ends for space applications, guiding the selection of modulator technology to improve RF performance.