Direct fibre-optic transmission of entire microwave satellite antenna signals

Abstract

The entire 500 MHz bandwidth multicarrier C-band microwave signal spectrum from a satellite antenna is transmitted over low-loss optical fibre. The optical system introduces 1dB or less of degradation for both low-spectral-density QPSK signals and high-spectral-density FM video signals present in typical satellite transmission systems. For the video signals, the signal/noise ratio after AM conversion was reduced from 56 dB to 55dB.